Ironheart
by Lalaith Quetzalli
Summary: -AU to Nightingale.- Sometimes tragedies may end lives, destroy families, shatter dreams; but sometimes they may also give some people a second chance, may allow new bonds to be formed and dreams believe impossible to become real. In the end, it's just a matter of how strong are your mind, your will, and your heart… (Can be Read as a Stand Alone)
1. For Family

So here we are. Another alternate incarnation of Nightingale. And this time we mess with the X-Men! IMPORTANT: This story can be read as a STAND ALONE. The only other fic that would be relevant is all but the finale of Necklace of Songs, though you don't need to have read that to understand the story.

This fic... I've had the idea in my head since I first began planning Fate and Destiny (back when that one was a tentative AU). I had so many different ideas, which eventually I manage to split into F&D, Gypsies, and this fic. I'm very proud of every story, but this one is precious to me in that the idea was one of the first I had. This was pretty much the first alternate incarnation I envisioned, before I even decided on making this particular set of AUs a thing!

Anyway, enough talking. On to the important part. From now on new chapters will be posted weekly (since I've finished writing all but the last AU and just need to do some editing I decided, why not?); new fics will still come after three weeks. But that means that the second piece for this will be up in a week.

Dreamcast: Mila Kunis as Marisa/Risa, Jessica Chastain as Willow Anya, Josh Hartnett as Johann; and for the twins... well, you can either picture the twins from Avengers: Age of Ultron, or the Peter from X-Men and Bryce Dallas Howard as Wendy as this time there will only be one set of twins.

P.S. Not sure if I actually need to warn about this but a couple of times in the course of this chapter Charles uses his telepathy in a less than ethical way. He has reasons, and explains them, and doesn't actually hurt anyone, but still.

* * *

Ironheart

(Alternative Universe to _Nightingale_)

_By: Lalaith Quetzalli _

_Sometimes tragedies may end lives, destroy families, shatter dreams; but sometimes they may also give some people a second chance, may allow new bonds to be formed and dreams believed impossible to become real. In the end, it's just a matter of how strong are your mind, your will, and your heart… _

**For Family**

For Family some may make War, find Peace, change the world.

Sometimes Fate can be cruel, what's one more baby dying in the cruelty and horror that are the concentration camps? What's one little girl dying in a fire when so many die for so many reasons just as terrible and tragic every day, everywhere? But sometimes… sometimes Fate may choose to be merciful and turn a blind eye when Destiny slips through to twist a single thread in the Tapestry. Just one, one life saved, that would in turn change so many others, until the Tapestry became something entirely different from what Fate once intended. But that was okay, just this once, Destiny would have her chance…

Somewhere on the East Coast, in the Covert CIA Research Base that served for Division X's Headquarters, a man with sky-blue eyes and floppy chestnut brown hair, all of thirty-years, dressed in dark slacks, a button-up shirt, vest and coat-jacket had been called into one of the offices to answer an urgent call from someone. Since it was known that he was one of those in charge of recruiting the new Division members he was immediately found when the call came in. A call he wasn't expecting and that took him completely by surprise:

"Hello? Charlie Darkholme speaking?" He answered automatically, worry filling his face as he heard something from the other end. "Risa my dear, what's wrong?" A pause, as someone said something else. "Okay darling, alright. Listen to me, I'll be very careful I promise you. And I'll get Raven to deal with everyone else. You keep your sister and yourself safe, you hear me? … We'll see you very soon, I promise."

He hung up just a moment later.

"Is everything alright Prof. Darkholme?" The secretary inquired.

She was nosy, conceited, one of those who believed his young students were freaks. She agreed with them being there at the base, but not because she saw them as being helpful, but because she thought they should be controlled. She saw herself, and all the other humans at the base as 'pure' and thus superior. She clearly hadn't heard or read any of the things Charlie had tried explaining to everyone about evolution and adaptation. Either that or she thought he was making it all up, since he was one of the 'freaks' himself. And also, he knew that not everyone took him seriously enough, seeing him as just an Assistant Researcher, and not the big name himself.

Her mind was so loud, Charlie knew that whatever he told her she'd go straight to her bosses to share. They all had instructions of doing exactly that. It was part of the plan for keeping control of the 'freaks'. He hated so much what he found in her mind that he felt no compunction when going straight into it and deleting everything about the call he'd just received. As far as she was concerned it'd been a wrong number, nothing important at all.

*Raven!* Charlie called through his mind even as he left the office, making sure to use some very light mind manipulation to make sure no human would pay attention to him, or to his sister, once she responded his summons. *I need to talk to you.*

Raven and Charlie had made a deal, when she was a teenager and prone to feel embarrassed over everything; and which had later been revised out of necessity. The final version of it established that while Charlie would keep a connection to her at all time, something that gave him awareness of her state and location at any given time, he wouldn't read her mind at all, and certainly would not go into her mind, unless it was absolutely necessary. He could be forgiven for the harmless surface thoughts, and any strong things she couldn't help but project; he'd respect her privacy and she'd accept that the telepathy was as much a part of him as her blue-scaly skin, and he'd accept that she was asking those things out of embarrassment, and not because she rejected him.

In any case, there was a deal. So Raven knew that if her brother was calling her, then it must be extremely important indeed. So she slipped away from where the others were doing their best to put their little common-room to rights, all while fighting their own drunkenness. She hadn't been as drunk as she'd seemed, which was good, considering the strain she'd managed to pick up in her brother's mind-voice.

They met in a corner of a hallway only they used, as it lead directly to their rooms.

"What's going on Charlie?" Raven asked straight out. "I thought you'd be getting ready for the trip to Russia with Moira and the others."

"I'll need to be there in a minute, but there's something else." Charlie nodded seriously. "I just got a call, from Risa."

"Risa…" Raven's eyes widened and her human facade rippled briefly. "What is it? Something happened to her? To Annie?"

"No, the two of them are just fine." Charlie shook his head. "She had a bad feeling. Apparently she's been having bad feelings practically since the day after we left Oxford. But today she woke up from terrified out of her mind. She believes something's coming, something big and bad."

"Well, I know she's not a precog exactly, not by any definition. But we both know Risa's 'feelings' have never been wrong."

"Exactly. Which is why I want you to pack everything and get yourself and everyone else out of here. Head home, Erik and I will meet you there once we've handled Russia. Maybe Moira, depends on how things go."

"You want… you want us to leave? I thought we were working for the CIA."

"So did I. But I don't think it's a coincidence that Risa began having these 'feelings' precisely since we agreed to work for the CIA. That's something we cannot ignore Raven."

"No, we cannot. What about Shaw then?"

"We'll still go after him. For Erik, and for the risk he posses to everyone in the world. I don't know what he might be planning exactly, manipulating the military in both Russia and the US as he has been, but it cannot be anything good. He needs to be stopped."

"And Erik will be going after him anyway. And you don't want to lose him."

Charlie shrugged with an almost helpless expression. He knew better than to directly lie to his sister, but he just wasn't ready to admit to some things out-loud. She understood and didn't pressure him any.

"Very well, I'll handle things on this end." She nodded. "You better take care of yourself. If you don't meet us in the manor I won't forgive you Charles. Neither will the girls."

"I know." He knew she only called him Charles when she was being extremely serious, and he didn't mock her for it, so he just nodded, kissed her brow and walked away.

**xXx**

In the end, things in Russia hadn't gone as bad as Charlie had been expecting since getting that call from Risa about her 'bad feeling'. Then again, Erik rushing off on his own after the White Queen, breaking into the house of a high-ranked military man, while Moira barely managed to convince her colleagues to wait for them instead of abandoning them to their luck in the middle of the Russian countryside wasn't exactly what one might call good. Just not as bad as it could have been. And then they got that call, just after landing back on the States, a call to inform them there had just been an attack on the base… and no one had survived.

Erik's roar of fury was almost eclipsed by the groan of everything metal in the vicinity.

"Erik… Erik!" Charlie cried out,

He barely kept himself from diving straight into the older man's mind to freeze him; he didn't do it, because he knew Erik would never forgive him for that, no matter how good his reasons. So instead he froze everyone else, to the point where they weren't even aware time was passing at all. They still had their bodily functions just fine, were still breathing, swallowing, blinking as necessary, their hearts were still beating; they just weren't aware of anything for the time being, not even time.

"Erik calm down!" Realizing what the problem might be he changed tactics and called. "The kids weren't at the base!"

That certainly got Erik's attention, as he pulled his power tight to him.

"Explain." He demanded through gritted teeth.

"I got a call right before we left from… someone I trust." Charlie explained, somewhat evasively. "She told me she had a bad feeling. Now, while Risa isn't exactly what you would call a seer in any sense of the word, she sometimes gets these… feelings. She knows instinctively when things are coming, especially bad things. She doesn't know what is going to happen, exactly, only that something is. And while it's not much, it is a forewarning all the same. When she told me that… I talked to Raven before leaving the base, told her to pack everything and go to a safe place."

"To a safe place…" The master of magnetism repeated. "What, exactly, is a safe place?"

"Our old family home." The telepath shrugged.

"You sent them to London? I doubt most of them even have passports."

"No, I… Yes, I've been living in Oxford for the last number of years, we all have. But we have a family home in the States, in New York State to be precise. That's where we need to head."

"Very well." The older man's eyes turned to the still frozen CIA Agents. "What about them?"

Charlie grimaced, knowing what he was going to have to do. It was part of the contingencies after all, and much as he might hate it, it was necessary, for his family's safety.

"As far as they're concerned, we never met up with them after going after Frost." The younger man announced soberly. "Eventually they got tired of waiting and left. Charlie Darkholme and Erik Lehnsherr are officially MIA. Their superiors will probably order them to erase any proof that we ever had anything to do with Division X, or the CIA as a whole. That is, if there was anything left after the attack on HQ."

"Is that…?" Erik was beyond shocked after hearing all that. "Can you really do that? Change all their minds, just like that?"

"I've done it before." Charlie admitted, still quite serious. "I know you see me as a privileged, naive boy Erik, but I need you to understand, that what you've seen thus far is not all there is to me. I'm not stupid. Raven and I wouldn't have survived this long if either of us were even remotely stupid. We… I will always do whatever is necessary to protect my family."

"Why do I have a feeling you're not just talking about Raven anymore?"

"We'll go into that. Now come on. We'll need a vehicle, it'll take us a few hours to make it to Westchester. Raven must have everything ready for our arrival already."

"Oh, and there's something else. This Risa… if you know someone who has the power to predict upcoming trouble. And if she's really that accurate that's gotta be a power of some kind. How come you didn't bring her in when we went recruiting?"

Charles took a deep breath. They had a long trip ahead of them, and he had a long story to tell. Hopefully Erik would forgive him for all the lies.

"How about we start from the beginning?" He proposed once they were on the jeep, Erik behind the wheel. "My name isn't Charlie Darkholme… or well, I suppose it depends on how you see things. Charlie Darkholme is real, to a point, I have papers for him, a record and everything. It's the name I use when I'm doing things that would be too risky to do under my actual name. So yeah, real enough, but not the one I was born with. I was born Charles Francis Xavier…"

So Charles told his story. He began by explaining how he was born in 1932, rather than 37, he was five years older than he'd claimed to be, and had three doctorates under his belt already. The CIA originally approached him because they believed him to be his own assistant. That was done on purpose, Charlie Darkholme was the identity he used when he got in touch with others that might prove less than trustworthy, the one that could be disappeared at a moment's notice; that, even if it would hold under scrutiny, would never actually lead anyone back to the real him, and especially, to his family. It was about then that Erik realized that perhaps Charlie… Charles, wasn't quite as naive and careless as he'd believed the telepath to be.

"No, I'm not." Charles agreed, then raised his hand before Erik could object. "And since we're putting all our cards on the table. I'm technically not in your head. See, unlike our dear Ms. Frost, whom I know you killed before we left the airbase." He rolled his eyes at Erik's surprise. "Don't look at me like that, of course you did, and of course I know you did it. I'm not judging you. You did what you believed was necessary."

"I thought you disapprove of killing." Erik muttered sharply.

"I disapprove of unnecessary killing." Charles qualified. "For example, killing everyone in that base would have been not just pointless but an unnecessary complication. One we did not need. We managed to make a clean break from all of them, no bloodshed. As for the White Queen… I would have been unable to keep her down for much longer, especially with other things to focus on, and we couldn't be sure she could be reasoned with, even if we tried to make her switch sides. The things I saw in her mind… she knew Shaw's plan was insane, yet was going along with it all the same." He shook his head. "So while I'll regret her death, I will not judge you for it."

"Just who are you Charles?" Erik questioned. "I thought I knew you and yet…"

"Oh you do know me. I'm essentially the same man I've always been." Charles smiled amiably. "First things first. What I was trying to explain before. While Ms. Frost was a telepath, and so am I… our powers were entirely different. Yes, the basis of both was in the mind, in being able to connect; yet we use them in entirely different ways. While she could break into other minds just fine, her forte was actually in shielding, creating walls around her own mind, as impenetrable as the diamond that was her secondary mutation. It's why I couldn't be of any help to the CIA team that tried to apprehend her and Shaw off the coast of Miami."

"Could you really not have gotten through her shields?"

"I… well, yes? With enough focus, yes, but doing so would have definitely given me away. Which was something I didn't want to do. Back then we weren't sure how dangerous an enemy she, and Shaw of course, might be. And you never give away all about you on the first encounter. If we had failed to take them down that night the danger would have been too great. So I chose what I saw as the lesser of two evils. I chose to hold back my real power, let them see me as weak, have the CIA mission fail, all so I… so we all might have a better chance later on, when we were better prepared."

"What about your specialty? If hers was shielding, what's yours?"

"Connecting. Actually, specialty probably isn't the right word. You see, while connecting is, indeed, what I do best, it's not something I have to focus on. It's as natural to me as breathing… or more like, sight. Yeah, that's probably the best simile. Just like you may see everything around you, that doesn't mean you pay attention to any particular thing, you just register they're there. You may see a flower, think it's beautiful, and then forget all about it an hour later. It's like that for me when it comes to minds. I sense the minds around me, and I have an idea of their surface thoughts, I don't need to go into their minds, I'm just aware of them. Sometimes people just want so much to be heard that they practically scream their own thoughts. Even then, I've learned to filter most times; except when they want me in particular to hear… or when they don't want me to hear them yet cannot help but think about it, that tends to call my attention." He shook his head. "Most of the time I don't even need to go into anyone's minds, my awareness is more than enough. There are exceptions of course. Whenever we are in a new place, with new people, I tend to pay attention. I need to know who I can trust, who I must guide away from certain things, and who I need to be wary of."

"Like? Give me an example."

"Well, for example. There were some people in the base who disliked us, some who feared us, some who admired us, even a couple of wished they could be us." He chuckled. "Agent Koenig, the one in charge of Division X? He was a very particular man. You see, he was fascinated by us, but not in the way I'm sure you would expect. He wasn't a scientist wanting to dissect us, he was… he was like a child who's spent his whole life reading Captain America comics and suddenly meets people who can do the same kind of things he can. Granted, none of us could do the exact same things, but you get my point. He was a geek who loved superheroes, and we were the closest thing he'd ever met. For him we were superheroes. It was how he saw us, and how he wanted the world to see us. He believed that when we defeated Shaw the world would come to love us, like they all once loved Captain America…"

Erik just had no words with which to reply to that.

Silence continued for several minutes, but eventually things got back on track. Charles went back to the main point: telling his story. He told Erik about his parents: the father who loved him dearly but died too soon; the mother who never loved him, who only saw him as what got Brian Xavier to marry her… that particular tidbit was actually the very first thing Charles ever 'heard' when his telepathy first manifested. It was something that marked him, deeply. And then there was Raven. Ten years old, malnourished, terrified and so alone… it was probably no surprise that she and Charles latched onto each other like they did. That was when Charles first realized just how powerful he really was. When he really wanted Raven to be his sister, for everybody to accept it, to not question it… and the next morning everyone was treating the little girl like she'd always been there…

It terrified him, realizing that he could impose his will upon others like that, that he could change things in their own minds. It was then he vowed to only ever do so in defense of his own family. A family that consisted solely of Raven back then. Then there were the Markos, and that was an entirely other mess Charles would rather not go into much. Kurt was dead and Cain hadn't been seen in over a decade, that was enough. Going to school, first to Harvard, and then to Oxford. Getting his first degree at sixteen, his first doctorate at 22…

And then that same summer, it was Raven's idea, for them to go backpacking across Europe. To see the sights, and mayhaps find some mutants. They'd actually met a few people who might have been, but they could never be sure. The mere idea of 'mutants' as such did not even exist back then, it had been Charles who coined it. And then the real surprise, when they met Risa and Annie. The two girls were all alone, had been for weeks, doing their best to survive, but they were so young still… and Risa was gifted. It was Raven who first connected with them, who came to love them so fast, she who convinced Charles to take them in. Like he once took her. And so their family of two suddenly became a family of four.

Raven had dropped out of college then. She had been halfway through a Bachelor's in Literature, her siblings had eventually convinced her to go back long enough to finish it. But that summer she'd chosen to drop out in order to take care of her new little sisters while Charles continued his own doctoral studies. He'd received his last doctorate just before Moira met with him in a pub, while he was celebrating.

"And she didn't know you were… well, you?" Erik didn't understand how that was possible.

"No." Charles shook his head. "It's actually a bit of a mix of telepathy, changing the way I talk, stand, walk, and people being willfully blind. You tell them that Charlie Darkholme is a 25 year old scholarship kid doing his best to make his way in the world and they will see a kid from a poor family, trying to make ends meet, working for an older Professor. Then you tell them Charles Xavier is a 30 year old rich American heir, who's spent over a decade at one university or another because he has nothing better to do… and that's pretty much all they'll see. And it'll never even occur to them that the two might be the same person."

Erik still thought it was absolutely ridiculous, but then again, he was a Nazi hunter… a very good Nazi hunter. He'd been able to go into a bank whose Chairman had helped the Nazis steal from the rich Jew families; he'd walked into a bar owned by one of the worst Nazis ever known, with none of those presents having any idea of who he was, or why he was there. So perhaps it wasn't quite that impossible to believe.

Charles told Erik a bit more about the years following the girls' adoption. How it was, going from two to four; the good and the bad.

"You say Risa is gifted, what about Annie?" Erik wanted to know.

"Not at all." Charles answered with a smile. "Annie is beautifully, perfectly, human. I studied both of their blood-work. It was actually how I found the very gene that gives away mutants." He exhaled. "I actually remember that Annie was very worried when I first made that discovery. Until then I think she, all of us really, had held onto the belief that she might have a passive mutation, or maybe she just hadn't manifested yet, she's still young after all. But after what the tests revealed… It took Risa, Raven and I a long while to convince her that we still loved her, that we'd always love her, regardless of whether she was human or mutant."

Erik nodded slowly. It was hard, for him, who was all for creating a division, an 'us and them', but how could he say that to Charles, when his own sisters fell on both sides of that divide? Who was he to tell them they shouldn't love each other? And if they accepted each other… wasn't that what Charles was always preaching? Integration? Was that why? Had he seen his sisters and they made him believe, or maybe just hope, that one day the rest of the world might be the same? He still thought it was too much to expect, a future too perfect to dream of, but he could no longer just dismiss it out of hand, it just didn't seem right. Also, and while he'd refused to think about it before, hadn't his own mother been human? And she'd loved him, her whole life (tragically short as it might have been). She'd loved him before his powers manifested, and afterwards, never more or less. To the very end she'd believed his ability to be a gift from God… and for so long he'd cursed at that same God, believing that if it had been a gift from Him it should have allowed him to save her, to save them all…

"Erik…" Charles murmured.

The older man exhaled, guessing the telepath must have picked up some, if not all of what had just gone through his mind. Even just a couple of hours earlier that would have infuriated him, but after hearing how Charles's power actually worked, after realizing what it would mean to ask him not to read his mind ever (what would he say if someone asked him to go through life never looking in a certain direction? Or worse, with his eyes closed? Or perhaps a more apt comparison would be to think about closing his sense of metal… he could never do that, it'd be like crippling himself, so why should he, why should anyone demand Charles do exactly that?).

"Thank you my friend…" Charles whispered, words completely heartfelt.

**xXx**

Erik was beyond shocked when he got his first look at the place Charles called home. It looked more like a palace than anything else. Truth was that if he hadn't heard his friend tell him the whole story, about his parents, stepfather and stepbrother, just looking at that place would have given the master of magnetism entirely the wrong idea of who he really was. But there had been no lie in the telepath's voice as he'd explained everything, not just about his mutation, but about his family, had explained why he lead the kind of life he did. The fact that, even if he and Raven had been so willing to reveal their status as mutants to the CIA, they'd never revealed the true scope of their gifts, and certainly never did anything that might put their little sisters in danger. It had gotten to the point that Erik had begun wondering how much of the Charlie and Raven personas, the overprotective and boring scholar, the rebellious and irresponsible teenager, were in reality a front.

"A lot." Charles groaned.

That was another surprise. How much, just in a matter of hours, Erik had gotten used to Charles answering questions that had never been really asked, not even fully formed. But he knew that the telepath meant nothing negative by it, and that he wasn't really invading anyone's privacy, just picking up on things that, on some level, Erik wanted him to hear. So it was okay.

"I was a bit like that, when I was younger." Charles admitted. "The Markos never liked Raven, and Cain discovered the truth about her once, insulted her, threatened her, threatened us both. I made him forget, was so harsh that I almost destroyed his mind completely. Even when I did my best to undo the damage I caused, I could never undo everything. He was never the same person afterwards…"

And a part of him didn't regret it, not as much as he probably should anyway, because he knew what Cain would have done, if he hadn't been made to forget the truth about Raven, and that simply couldn't be allowed.

"After that I was so afraid." It felt almost like a confession, yet Charles was willing to make it, even when they'd known each other for such a short time, he trusted Erik, like he'd trusted very few people in his life. "The house no longer felt like a sanctuary, which is why we moved to Oxford as soon as we could. I got us an apartment and then… I was terrified, all the time. I kept checking and double-checking that all the curtains were closed, the doors locked whenever Raven would go around blue. Always kept an eye on her when she went out and hated whenever she decided to change something, anything, afraid that someone might notice it, might become suspicious. It was ridiculous, how could they have known anything? Even if they were to see, it would have been easy to make them believe they had had one too many drinks… but like I said, I was terrified. And Raven thought it was lack of trust, or that I no longer liked her being blue, and she rebelled." He exhaled, shaking his head. "Our trip across Europe that summer it was, in many ways, a last ditch attempt at reconnecting. To be honest, I don't know what would have become of us if things had gone any differently. If we hadn't found Risa and Annie when we did. If they hadn't joined our family… It was that very thing, Raven becoming a big sister, becoming their caretaker, their protector, that finally allowed us to find a balance. That let her understand where I was coming from, what was really behind my actions and words; and at the same time, I began seeing her as more of an equal. She was no longer the little sister that needed protection, she was an older sister herself, in charge of the two little girls who needed her, needed us both. It was because of them that the identities of Charlie and Raven Darkholme were created, as well as all the plans and contingencies, to make sure that, above anything else, our family would always be safe. Always."

Laughter greeted them after Erik and Charles left the jeep in the garage (with Erik making a mental note that he'd be going back and checking some of those cars, to which Charles chuckled and promised to let him take whichever he liked for a spin). They found everyone in the ample backyard (if something so big could even be called that). Raven was blue, in short-shorts and a sleeveless top, someone had apparently managed to convince Hank to go barefoot, Angel's wings were out and they were all involved in what seemed like a very convoluted game of tag.

The first new person Erik noticed was a girl probably in her late teens, hair of a brown so dark it looked almost black, in a loose ponytail that fell down her back; the curious part was she was wearing an off-white sleeveless top and a long skirt with wide horizontal bars of various colors and flowery print and flats, and moving through the branches of one of the biggest trees with the same ease as if she were taking a stroll through a valley. There was something about her that pinged inside his mind but the man just couldn't lay his finger on it.

It was then he noticed the other person, the other Xavier sister (he'd no idea which was which). As she rushed out of some bushes and barely managed to stop her run in time not to crash head-first into Charles and Erik himself. The moment Erik got a good look at her he froze, his mind going almost completely blank. She was in her early teens, petite, warm brown eyes and bright red hair falling down to the middle of her back in a braid.

Not a word came from Erik's mouth, but his mind was practically screaming. A single scene running in a loop, which Charles couldn't help but be pulled into: _A dirt street, a screaming mob, a man yelling, pleading, a woman wailing, a childish voice calling from somewhere (all in a mix of Russian, Ukrainian and Romani), a hostel, and fire… _

Charles stumbled backwards with the force it took him to pull himself out of Erik's mind. He had seen that scene, that terrible moment before, though from an entirely different point of view: that of a young girl, watching everything from a window on the top floor of that very hostel. A ten-year-old who stood there, observing, doing her best to console her five-year-old sister even as she kept calling for her parents, until the fire became too much. Then she picked the younger girl up, got her to hold onto her back and ran, out of the room and down the hall. By the time she reached the staircase it was too late, covered in flames and falling apart. Then there was the sound of glass breaking as the heat caused most of the windows to break. Which gave her a sudden, absolutely insane idea. She didn't think twice about it, knowing it was their only chance. She just told her little sister to hold tight, and then she ran…

"Erik…" Charles kept calling and calling his name but nothing worked.

"Dadro (Papa)!" Annie was screaming, in Romani.

She hadn't done that since about six months or so after joining their family, when she learned enough English and came to trust them enough she no longer called for her lost family in the middle of the night.

And then Risa was moving. She jumped from one branch to the next until eventually slipping to the ground with what almost looked like preternatural grace. She seemed to almost glide across the grass until she reached the older mutant, she said nothing, not a word, just reached for him, cupping his face in her hands, he was so much taller than her, but that mattered little in that moment. The tips of her fingers barely grazed his temples, but that was enough. The brunette closed her eyes and focused.

No one knew what was happening exactly for those few seconds the contact lasted, not even Charles. Whatever was going on, it was happening at a much more basic level than anything his telepathy could pick up on. There were no words, not even images, only half formed ideas and feelings (and he was no empath to really pick up on those).

When the moment ended it was obvious. Erik and Risa broke apart. The girl swaying dangerously until Charles rushed to hold her up.

"Risa!" Raven cried, hurrying to them. "What happened?!"

"He was trapped in a loop, I needed to get him out." Risa murmured, taking deep breaths, doing all she could to regain her composure.

"What did he do?" Raven insisted.

"He didn't do anything Raven…" Charles tried to placate her.

It didn't work. Truth was, Raven could be more overprotective than even Charles when she set her mind to it.

"He's our father." Risa blurted out.

"What…?!" That certainly sent everyone reeling.

It was about then that Erik finally regained his senses. He had been staring unblinkingly at Annie, and then he turned his eyes towards Risa.

"Marisa…" He murmured, with the tone of a man who had just found an oasis after wandering for years in an endless dessert. "You… you are alive…" His eyes turned back to the younger girl. "Anya… my girls…"

"Yes dadro." Anya nodded, tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. "We're alive."

That was all that was needed, in the next moment Anya (Annie) was in Erik's arms, or he was in hers, and the two were holding onto each other with all their strength, crying. Marisa/Risa, hesitated all of two seconds before joining them, the three soon ending on their knees, refusing to let go. It had been so long (eight years, it felt almost like forever to them), they had long since given up hope (Erik especially, he'd been so sure they were dead, with the screams, and the fire, and the way the whole building had been swallowed by the flames and collapsed upon itself) and yet there they were. It was a miracle…

They stayed there for what felt like a very long time, though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes, really. And as perfect as Erik felt, holding the two girls, his daughters, in his arms, a part of him couldn't help the need to know, to understand… how had he failed them?

*Erik…* The telepath whispered straight into his head.

*It's the truth Charles.* Erik retorted mentally as well. *I failed them. My daughters, the most precious treasures I've ever had and I failed them, somehow. I left them! Abandoned them! For eight years!*

*You didn't know they were alive…* Charles pointed out quietly.

*Exactly!* He shook his head.

It was the movement that caught the girl's attention.

"I… I thought you were dead…" Erik hated repetitiveness, but he just couldn't help himself, the shock was so great.

"So did we." Anya pointed out. "We thought you dead dadro!"

"What happened?" Erik wanted to know. "I… I don't understand. The fire… and I kept calling out, and you were inside, and the people wouldn't let me in, they wouldn't let me get you… and then the fire got worse… and the windows… you were on the top floor and… I thought you had burned with the building!"

"We almost did." Anya admitted soberly, her hand reached to her temple, her ear, and behind it, to the scars hidden mostly by her hairline.

"You would have never reached us dadro." Marisa did her best to console him. "The fire… it was too bad. By the time we left the room, everything was on fire, even the stairs, and everything was falling apart. You would have died if you had gone in. There was no way for us to go down, there would have been no way for you to go up, to reach us, not in time, not before everything collapsed. There was no time…"

"Then how…" The older mutant still didn't understand, and he needed to, he needed to know how much he'd failed… how had he not known his girls were alive?!

"I tried to run, with Annie, but by then it was too late." Marisa explained. "The fire was already everywhere, and everything was beginning to crumble… and then the windows shattered. It was then I got this crazy idea into my head…" She shook her head at the memory. "Remember there was an oak tree on a side of the hostel? This huge, really old tree…?"

"Yes, you loved that tree." Erik nodded. "Would sit on its peeking roots to read whatever you had gotten your hands on. Or when your dai (mama) asked you to watch over Anya while she and I were working…"

"Well, I kind of… jumped there." Risa half-shrugged, half-winced at the memory. "There was really nothing else we could do, nowhere else to go. Not with the fire that advanced… so I told Annie to hold on tight, and I ran, down the creaking hall and then jumped straight out the window at the end of it. I wasn't actually sure I would make it to the tree."

"But you did." Erik said, more to reassure himself than for anything else.

"I did." Marisa nodded. "Still, it was a less than stellar landing. And I think I kind of knocked myself out somehow. Both of us. When Anya woke me up the fire had mostly consumed itself, there was nothing but ashes left of the hostel. Though thankfully it had never extended from there, the tree had been just fine, as were we. It took some effort but we eventually managed to get down and… it was all gone. The whole town… it was nothing but ruins… There was nothing left, no one."

Erik actually sobbed at that.

"That was my fault." He admitted, to everyone's gasp of disbelief. "I… they wouldn't let me in. I knew they were afraid of me, of the things I could do, I understood that. But they wouldn't let me in! They wouldn't let me reach you! You were innocent! Both of you. You were just little girls, and the fire… I thought you had died in the fire, and it was their fault because they wouldn't let me in, they wouldn't let me save you! I lost you and it was their fault and…"

Nothing else needed to be said, everyone understood. It still prompted the two girls to hug Erik again, tightly.

"You didn't lose us dadro, we're right here." Marisa reassured her.

"Dadro…" Anya called after what seemed like forever. "Where is dai?"

"She… she left me." Erik admitted quietly. "She was… terrified of me, after the things I did in my fury. She grieved for you, but was too afraid of me, so she left. I tried to find her, to make sure she'd be safe. Even if she no longer wanted to be my wife, if she could no longer love me, trust me. I just wanted to make sure she was alright, but she kept running away… so eventually I stopped looking. I decided to just… to let her go…"

No one asked anything more after that. The shock of all the reveals thus far being more than enough for the time being.

Eventually more pieces of the story would come out. Like the fact that only Anya was Erik's, biologically. Marisa was, like him, a survivor of the camp. A gypsy baby whom Magda (Erik's wife and Anya's mother) had taken care off when her birth-mother died shortly after arriving to the camps. Erik had managed to get them both out the same night he escaped, shortly before the end of WWII.

The girl had numbers on her arm, just like Erik did, though she didn't remember the camps, or anything from the war, she'd been too little. She did remember the years spent on the road, with a Romani caravan, remembered when Erik (back then going by Max Eisenhardt) asked Magda to marry him, and had adopted Marisa, officially naming her Marisa Ruth Eisenhardt. And then Anya was born, and Max convinced Magda to settle down in a little town in South Ukraine, where they might make a better life for all of them. And it really seemed like it might be possible at first. With Max working in the mines and Magda washing and mending clothes. And then things began going not-so-well at the mine; Max kept trying, but his boss was convinced he had to have stolen his product, as no one else managed to extract even half of what he did (even he hadn't realized how much he'd been using his gift), the man refused to pay him and Max got so mad… his power got away from him. Word must have gotten out, because by the time he got to the doors of the hostel a mob had gathered, they were all accusing him of all sorts of things, calling him a monster, refusing to let him go in… and then there was fire…

They didn't even know if the fire had been accidental, or if someone had purposefully burned that hostel, with the girls inside. It was something that they'd rather not ponder too much on. In his grief and fury Max had leveled the whole village, killed everyone there except his own wife. And then she ran, neither of them noticing the unconscious girls (ages five and ten) on the high branches of the oak tree.

Erik himself had spent the next eight years running. First after Magda, and then after Nazis, after those he saw as responsible for the loss of both his families, of everyone he'd ever loved (he'd reached that conclusion after accidentally witnessing a meeting in Italy between a man he'd known in the camps, and the owner of the mine in Ukraine…). It had eventually all lead back to Schmidt… Shaw (whatever the name).

And then of course there were the girls. They'd stayed the night in one of the few houses left standing. After much arguing about it they'd eventually decided to scavenge for what they could find: clothes, food… since their few possessions had burned with the hostel. And then they got to walking. They somehow managed to make it all the way to Bucharest in Romania in the next six-eight weeks, doing their best to keep themselves away from anyone who might think to ask why two little girls were on their own. Then in Bucharest they'd met the Xaviers and the rest, as some might say, was history. They'd left Romania at the end of the month as Anya Willow and Marisa Ruth Xavier.

**xXx**

In the end, the confrontation against Shaw was more than a little anticlimactic. The group spent the two weeks following their arrival to the mansion training their powers to their limits. It was amazing for everyone involved. The Xaviers had mostly perfected their powers already: Charles his telepathy, Raven her shape-shifting (though since meeting Darwin she'd begun shapeshifting in different ways, forms that weren't fully human, seeking to find new ways to either fight or shield herself), while Marisa was an empath who could read and interpret emotions expertly and could even project them (only to show others, never to force them to feel something); Anya had no special gift, but she was in great physical shape, knew several martial arts and kept trying to convince either Charles or Erik to teach her to shoot.

Hank was learning to use his primate aspects to his advantage, though his self-consciousness and lack of self-confidence made it so it seemed to be an eternal 'one step forward and two steps back' with him. Angel already knew how to fly and to 'spit acid', but with Erik's direction she learned to be more aware of her surroundings, and fight while flying. Alex was in good physical condition and with Hank's intervention (in the form of some kind of chest-plate) he was able to control and direct his energy blasts. Sean learned to modulate his voice so as to only hit what he wanted and to lessen the risk of hurting his teammates while in the middle of a fight; he also learned how to fly (it was Charles' idea, while Hank created the wings, though it was Angel who actually taught him how to control his body while in the air). Darwin was already pretty much an expert with his own mutation, though during his training he managed to do it faster than before, and he learned to fight, which he never had before.

And then there was President Kennedy, addressing the nation regarding the tensions with Russia, and the nuclear missiles heading for Cuba.

"That's where we're gonna find Shaw." Erik declared when the speech was over.

"How do you know?" Alex wondered what made him so sure.

"Two super powers facing off, and he wants to start world war three." Charles pointed out calmly. "He won't leave anything to chance."

"So much for diplomacy." Erik scoffed, then shook his head.

"Why are we waiting?" Marisa asked, curious.

The question took them all by surprise.

"What…?" They didn't understand.

"Why is it that you… we, keep reacting to everything?" She asked. "I mean, I know we had to wait to know who Shaw really was, that he really was a threat. But we're sure of all that now. Why are we still waiting for him to act? What if we end up waiting so long that the war begins? What if we stop Shaw but by then it's too late and the soldiers attack each other? Then defeating Shaw will have been pointless. So why are we waiting? We know where Shaw's going, he might even be there already. Why not go there, right now and take him down before the fleets arrive, before there's any real chance for war?"

Charles and Erik looked at each other. It all sounded so perfectly logical… they had no idea why it had never occurred to either of them.

Plans were made in record time. At some point during the past week Erik, Charles, Raven and Hank had briefly returned to the old Division X HQs, while almost everything was lost, the experimental plane Hank had been working on was still mostly alright (and Erik could fix what wasn't with his own gift). They'd gotten it to the Xavier estate and hid it, knowing they might need it when the time came to confront Shaw.

Whenever not training with Charles, Hank had been working on other projects (like Banshee's wings and Alex's chest-plate). He had special suits for all of them ready. Made to help them deal with g-forces (caused by the speed of the jet) as well as bullet-proof; he'd also added metal fixtures to all of them at Erik's insistence, in case of an emergency. Each suit specially made for each of them.

Erik nearly had a coronary when realizing his daughters would be accompanying them, but in the end, they hadn't just trained right with them, but none of them felt right leaving them behind, not wanting to risk Shaw somehow finding the estate and going after them, just like he'd tried to get them all at HQs… So they went.

They found Shaw's in the Atlantic, just a few miles off the coast of Cuba.

"Do we have to wait for them to come out and fight us?" Alex asked unexpectedly.

Yet again, a question that took some by surprise.

"He's right." Angel agreed. "Can't you just… I don't know, crush the sub? Crack it open so they all drown down there? I mean, Shaw's powerful, but unless he's like Darwin there's no way he can survive that, can he?"

"That's… a wonderful idea." Raven agreed wholeheartedly.

Erik's eyes were open wide. Well, he'd been planning on pulling the sub out, crushing it, or at the very least damaging it enough for the water to get in shouldn't be any harder, right?

*You can do it Erik…* Charles whispered straight into his mind. *I believe in you.*

Somehow that helped, more than Erik would have ever been able to properly explain.

The bomb-bay doors already opened, since Banshee had gone out to serve as sonar and Darwin had followed him to have his back. Erik and Charles headed there. While they couldn't see the submarine, Charles knew where it was. It wasn't planned, but when Erik had trouble taking hold of the sub, Charles stepped closer, pressing a hand to the back of Erik's neck, letting their minds touch. The idea was to press the location of the sub into his mind, neither mutant could have ever imagined the way their own minds would react. What was supposed to be a brief, superficial touch didn't stay that way for long. From one moment to the next, their mental contact went from the equivalent of something as light as the touch of a feather, to something as strong as steel chains. Both mutants blinked in shock and yet… they both could feel the way their mutations aligned, the way their power grew exponentially.

*This… this is us.* Neither knew who said it first, or if they both managed to think it at exactly the same time.

With that connection in place (which they'd eventually seek to understand better), it was almost child's play for them to reach out, make sure that Shaw and his… associates were right there in the sub, that they had no idea they were there, the danger they were in. And then the submarine crumbled around them, with the same ease as a piece of wet cardboard. They could hardly believe it. Even if Erik thought it was almost too easy, and nowhere near the level of pain that Shaw deserved, all he should have suffered for the pain he'd caused… Erik had made his choice, and he'd rather kill the other mutant quickly than risk his daughters, or Charles or any of the others being hurt, or worse, killed, like his family had been.

And just like that, Shaw was gone. Mission accomplished, Charles and Erik stepped back, the moment the telepath took his hand off the master of magnetism and their mental connection broke it almost hurt. They couldn't help but feel an emptiness where the other had been, like a hole had been punched somewhere inside them; except… except not completely, there was still a trace of the other there, like the ghost of their bond. It helped stabilize them even as they stumbled back to their seats, to the worried looks of the girls.

Banshee, Darwin and Angel (who'd gone out there to help Banshee get out of the sea as he had yet to learn how to take flight without having to jump off somewhere) chose that precise moment to return; which serve to pull everyone's attention from Charles and Erik, thankfully.

"Hank, get us out of here." Raven ordered, realizing her brother and Erik were still too out of it to focus properly in that moment.

She had no idea what had happened though she knew, without a doubt, that something had.

They left the area as the sun began rising on the horizon, the American and Russian fleets approaching. Each fleet would take their place there, threateningly waiting for the other's move, like the worst kind of stand-off, or a game of chicken no one really wanted to play. They'd be gone once again before the end of the day, somehow having managed to avoid WWIII.

**xXx**

Many things happened in the weeks, months, years, following the confrontation with Shaw; and the stand-off between Russia and the US that the world came to call the Cuban Missile Crisis. A world that hadn't the slightest idea that beings like mutants had ever been involved; even the CIA, after giving up on Charles and Erik they'd chosen to forget about it all, it was easy enough, when the Hellfire Club disappeared off the face of the Earth. Moira was the only one still alive who had ever seen them, and she had enough of a hard time getting her career back on track after the failures in Vegas and Russia. It was easy enough for her to pretend she'd never known mutants existed. It took a while for Charles and Erik to understand what happened when they connected, and to learn how to control it. Not just the kind of training they'd gotten used to, prior to the defeat of Shaw, but also meditation, introspection, and long talks. It was Marisa who gave them a clue when they had none: they needed to know each other, inside and out; but for that to be possible, first they needed to know themselves.

"Your power… it's not just yours, of either one of you, it comes from both." Marisa did her best to explain. "You need each other, both to have it, and to wield it. You need to be in sync, and for that you need to understand yourselves, to understand each other, to understand and to accept. It's the only way it'll ever work."

The one thing she didn't tell them, was that she could see the bond that connected them, it was more than Onslaught (what they all came to call the fusion of their minds and powers). It was something that Risa had seen before, but she'd never had a proper word for, until she found an old journal in the Xavier library (she and Anya had never been to the estate before). It had belonged to a Charlotte Xavier and she'd written down many things she'd researched from different cultures and religions that she found interesting: terms and phrases. One in particular was 'Bashert', a Yiddish word meaning 'destiny', but it wasn't just that, the word was used to refer to a person's preordained partner/spouse, or in other words, a soulmate…

And even without anyone explaining it to her, Risa knew that was exactly what she was seeing: that multicolored, shining rope… the silver cord, it was a soulmate bond.

When one day she forgot to knock before entering Charles's office, to find their chess game forgotten, Charles in Erik's lap and the two kissing like the world was ending… that was pretty much all the confirmation she needed. In the end, it surprised no one at all.

It didn't matter if such relationships were illegal in the 'outside world'. They had learned to accept what made each of them who they were: firefly wings, blue skin, odd-looking feet; loving someone of the same gender was just one more in the list. Also, Marisa and Anya had talked and changed their surname to Eisenhardt-Xavier; and they'd even created a story for it that was mostly the truth (they'd been separated from their parents after a terrible tragedy, been adopted by the Xaviers, and eventually found their father again years later; he'd moved in with them and become part of the family, and they carried both surnames to show they saw them all as family). It also served to explain Charles and Erik being together so often, without the wrong kind of people finding out the truth.

They weren't the only couple either. Alex and Darwin had seemingly been competing for Angel's affections for what seemed like forever, only for the two of them to eventually end up together. Something that surprised everyone except Risa (she could see the beginnings of their bond too) and Angel herself (she claimed she knew what men interested in her looked like, and neither of them had ever looked at her like that). Raven gave it a try with Hank, but the results had been absolutely disastrous. In the end the young man's insecurities won as he used Raven's blood to create a serum in an attempt to 'fix' his appearance. He offered it to Raven as well and the row that followed was something no one in the house had ever heard the likes of before. Raven took off after that. Just informing her siblings and Erik (who was as good as her brother as well by then) that she needed time to cool of. Angel offered to go with her, and so the two girls took off for a summer of fun, traveling around the country.

They weren't there when Hank finally used of the serum and instead of 'curing' his mutation, ended up enhancing it, turning himself blue and furry. As far as Erik, Anya and Marisa were concerned, it was karma; and while Charles would never say it out-loud he couldn't help but think that it was Hank's own fault too.

When Raven returned at the end of the Summer she was better, happier. She made no comment about Hank's changed appearance. Didn't ignore him completely, they still lived together and were working to open a school, the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters (Charles had wanted to put Erik's name there too, but the Lehnsherr name was too dangerous with his history as a Nazi hunter, which was why he'd gone back to using the name of Eisenhardt; also, the name Xavier simply carried more weight), but she'd put him behind her. And Hank… he was too ashamed to approach her.

Kennedy's assassination in November of 63' took everyone in the Xavier mansion by surprise. Though nothing could have possibly surprised her more than when Raven announced her pregnancy, giving birth on the Spring of 64'. Everyone knew that single mothers weren't well regarded. Still, it was easy enough to make up a story: young love, an elopement, only the groom had died shortly after the wedding. It was easy enough to believe, and between Charles and Erik they had the means to create enough of a paper trail to make it believable. And then Kurt was born, and Raven refused to have anything to do with the baby.

Truth was, she didn't want to be a mother. She loved her little sisters to bits, but while she felt responsible for them, she just didn't believe herself capable of being a mother, of being what a defenseless, innocent baby needed. That, and just looking at Kurt, with her blue skin, but his father's dark hair and tail… she couldn't stand the memory of her one night stand with Azazel, couldn't stand thinking about the fact that she'd slept with the bastard who'd razed Division X to the ground, murdering dozens, some she'd considered friends, who'd have killed them all if he'd had the chance, and been given the order. It didn't matter if she'd been drunk, if he clearly hadn't had the slightest idea of who she was, it was still too much.

So Marisa stepped up. By then she was twenty years old, had a Masters' Degree in Linguistics and was certified in over half a dozen languages. She was set to become the languages teacher in the Institute, once they opened in the Fall. She became Kurt's mother. And Raven… she left. Went East, with Angel; during their trip they'd heard rumors about mutants in the military, and she wanted to make sure someone wouldn't abuse them, so she went.

The Institute finally opened its gates in the Fall of 64'. It had a great first couple of years, and then the war in Vietnam got worse, and the army began drafting. It almost broke Charles, to see so many of his teachers and older students receive their letters, having to go to war… the most painful however, was when Sean, Darwin and Alex got their letters. It wasn't that he didn't love every single one of his students, but those three… they had been some of his first, Charles loved them as family, and it pained him to know he might lose them. So he and Erik made sure they were as ready as they could be, trained them not just in their mutations, but even in human skills, hand-to-hand combat, shooting, everything they could think of; and made them promise that they'd fight like hell to return home. The boys promised.

Raven did good in Vietnam. She, Angel, and others who joined them eventually helped saved many lives, of both humans and gifted. Meanwhile, Charles and Erik did their best to hold the fort down at home. The Institute couldn't keep going without teachers (only the two of them. Hank and Marisa were left, as Anya was still in college herself, studying psychology), but they didn't sit back doing nothing. They became a sanctuary instead. They would travel, seeking out those mutants who had no home, nowhere to go; they'd also taken in the younger siblings and children of those sent to war, who'd feared their families needed somewhere safe to stay. And then Raven and her team began sending them those they rescued. Not all stayed, but still, they were doing good.

Like they did when they stopped Bolivar Trask before Trask Industries could ever be founded. The man may not have really known that much about mutants, but he'd suspected enough, and his plans, especially with the influence of Stryker… even if the man had never really known what the 'Darkholmes' could do, he had known they weren't completely human. His own grandson being born a mutant was the straw that broke the camel's back. That was perhaps one (or two) of the few times Charles did not regret changing a person (or two)'s mind(s). By the time he was done neither man so much as knew the word 'mutant' (and Stryker Jr. believed his son had contracted a terrible illness and died suddenly, as that was the only way to ensure Jason would never be in danger from him).

By the time the Vietnam War came to an end a lot had changed. While Charles and the others began working on reopening the Institute as soon as they had enough teachers, the place was no longer just a school. It was also a Sanctuary. Extensions had been added to the mansion, and while one wing still served as the student's dorms, and two others held classrooms (in the lower floors) and teachers offices and bedrooms (in the upper floors), with the whole ground floor being the dinning room, public office room, library and entertainment rooms; the last wing had been converted into sets of rooms for 'refugees'. They had all kinds, those who only stayed from a night to a few days, as they recovered from whatever had happened, those who might stay a few weeks to a couple of months as they got their lives in order (most of the time those they rescued from unscrupulous individuals like Trask and Stryker), the new mutants who stayed just long enough to learn to control their mutations and go back to their lives, to those who had nothing, yet weren't properly part of the Institute either.

Anya, being openly a human with mutant family (and with a psychology degree) tended to be the one to help the families of new mutants. The others had no doubt that it was thanks to her that many human parents and siblings came to accept their mutant relatives, more than even Charles at his most optimist had honestly expected.

Marisa did her best to help, but for the most part she'd her plate full. First with Kurt, and then somehow she'd ended up being the closest Jason had to a mother as well. Jason was a very particular individual, his sociopathic tendencies worried most of the adults in the Institute; but what they found most curious was how part of his mutation (he created illusions) allowed him to create a sort-of imaginary friend, a girl he called Medea, except the girl cared, and it wasn't just faked because Risa could feel it. It was as if Medea somehow expressed emotions, felt empathy when Jason for some reason couldn't. Marisa believed that as long as Jason and Medea were kept in balance they had nothing to worry about, so she did her best to provide them with a loving environment. Also, Kurt loved having a little brother (and a sister, almost).

As for Kurt himself… he knew Marisa wasn't his birth mother, Raven was. It was explained to him, how she didn't feel capable of taking care of him. How there was nothing wrong with him, or her, it was just how things were. She still loved him, they were still family; and Risa, she loved him too, as if she'd given birth to him herself, and that was enough.

As for Raven herself. She was back in the Institute, though she would take off every so often, to help other mutants when she could. Until eventually, at her insistence the X-Men were recreated. A team she lead to help other mutants, wherever they needed to (Erik went on those missions often enough, and sometimes even Charles, but mostly they stayed in the Institute, both to educate and to ensure everyone there would be as safe as they could make them). Angel… she never returned, she'd died during the war, on a mission that went so wrong it was a miracle Raven and most of the team made it out alive. She was never forgotten though, nor all the good she'd done for everyone.

Every so often Charles would go into Cerebro and use it to send a message to every mutant in his reach, telling them about the Institute. It allowed for those mutants who had the means, to head there without having to wait for either Charles, Erik, Marisa, Anya, or the X-Men to find them. Some would be taken there by their families (either families that knew the truth and supported them, that wanted to get rid of them without actually hurting them, or that had no idea and just saw the Institute as an exclusive boarding school). Charles and the others never forced any of the young mutants in their care to reveal their status. As much as some like Erik and Raven felt they should be free and proud to be themselves, they knew all too well that some humans just weren't ready to accept those who were different, and they would never force innocent children to face any possible rejection, negativity, perhaps even violence. Though they would certainly be there when/if it ever came.

Many young mutants joined them with that. As was the case of Peter and Wendy Maximoff near the end of the summer of 73'. From what the boy explained, while their mother wasn't exactly anti-mutant, ever since Wendy had had an accident with her powers around their little sister (half sister and completely human), she had become extremely tense and refused to be around the girl. So Peter decided they'd be better at the Institute and had packed their bags and gotten them there. It also apparently did not surprise him when his mother simply took off with their little sister without even saying goodbye before the end of the year.

Anya married Johann Reynolds, a Vietnam Vet (who'd served with Alex and the others) in 1975, and the following year she gave birth to their first-born. A perfectly human boy they named Django Maximilian. In 1982 Johann died in a tragic car accident, something so sudden, no one could have prevented it. Then, less than a year later, Anya presented everyone with the last gift her husband ever gave her: their daughter: Nina Edith, a mutant.

"She's beautiful…" Risa whispered softly as she held her baby niece. "Perfect."

"That she is." Anya agreed with a tired smile, before turning to her son, standing at the door. "Come chikni (son), come meet your little phei (sister)."

With the years they'd come to use the Romani words almost like terms of endearment.

"She's so small…" Django whispered very quietly as he went to her mom, right as her aunt placed the baby in her arms.

"So were you." Anya pointed out. "You're both equally perfect."

She'd never stop telling them that. No matter what, she'd make sure neither of her children ever had reason to feel more or less than the other simply because of their genes. No matter what.

Raven finally returned to the Institute to stay in the late 80s, and she wasn't alone. Accompanied by a woman in her early thirties, with pale blonde hair and milky-white eyes, blind, she was Irene Adler, Destiny… she was also Raven's match. Much changed with her arrival, with the both of them there in the Institute. Kurt was in his twenties and he saw Marisa as his mother, that wasn't about to change, but he was willing to consider Raven an aunt.

And time kept passing. More mutants arrived to the Institute, some as students, others as teachers and a few more simply seeking sanctuary, either permanent or temporary. Beyond the estate's borders the world seemed to be going crazy, as always. The Cold War between Russia and the US, the arms-race, the seemingly endless string of wars in the Middle East. A new secret agency rose in the latter half of the 80s, supposedly to protect the world from threats within or without. Destiny warned them that while they were no Trask (or Stryker) they wouldn't take kindly to gifted either, so the X-Men would need to watch out for them; when it came to their missions, and also in the Estate itself. Charles of course had made use of all his influences, as well as some of his own power, to make sure no one would ever even consider investigating the Institute, but it was better to be careful anyway.

Ever so slowly the world was realizing not all humans were the same; that there were some capable of doing things that should have been impossible… Gifted wouldn't be able to hide forever… For good or for evil, one day humanity would know they existed.

* * *

As always, full sized poster/cover and set of wallpapers can be found in DA.

In case anyone's curious about it. The title "Ironheart" comes from what in the comics is Erik's original surname, which I (and many others) tend to use as his mother's surname, and the one Erik might have gone by while in hiding: Eisenhardt, it's the literal meaning of it.

For those wanting to see Loki, he's coming, I promise!


	2. For Love

Not one review/comment in the week since I posted the first part of this, not even one! That's... disheartening, but I remind myself of what my mom would tell me, years ago when I was starting and it broke my heart whenever something like this happened: 'You are looking for readers, not writers'. So, chances are people are reading this, they just either aren't interested, or simply aren't the kind to leave reviews. That's okay, I can leave with that. I won't say I write only for myself, because if I did I wouldn't post. I do love reviews, but I know that the lack of them doesn't necessarily mean no one likes this.

Anyway, moving on from that. And to what concerns this piece: I was kind of missing Nightingale confronting Asgardians to protect Loki, so I included some of that here. Also, I did something with Jason Stryker... it might be a tad crazy, but it just fit so well with everything else... I hope you'll like it.

Dreamcast: Mila Kunis as Risa, Helen Mirren as Old Anya Willow, Julianne Moore as Old Irene/Destiny, Riccardo Scamarcio as Django, Candice Accola as Lorna/Polaris, Amanda Seyfried as Ylva, Shiloh Fernandez as Fenrir, Katy McGrath as Helena.

The songs in this chapter are "Once Upon a December" the original movie version sung by Liz Callaway (for some reason even I don't understand I like it more than the more comercial one by Deana Carter), and "I Was Here" as sung by Beyonce (this song will actually be popping up on every single AU from here on out; I totally loved it and I wanted all the other incarnations to have that in common, as a sort of invisible thread connecting them all, because in the end they're all Nightingale).

* * *

**For Love**

For Love they will Die, and they will Live, and Transform the universe.

For as long as she could remember, Risa'd had dreams. Not the normal dreams most people have, the normal, easy, sometimes ridiculous things; not even the bizarre, illogical others might claim. No, her dreams were different; they were somewhat fuzzy, yet incredibly vivid at the same time. It shouldn't have been possible at all, yet it was. And always, when she woke up, she'd have the absolute certainty that she'd dreamt important things, answers to every question she'd ever thought of, and some that would never occur to her… but she couldn't remember. She never remembered anything beyond the most basic things, lose details here and there. She remembered rose gardens, but had no idea where they were, if it was one, or more; she remembered heavy, stuffy dresses, and long, airy ones, remembered trees of silver and palaces of gold, singing and dancing… but hadn't the slightest idea of how it all fit together.

Risa wasn't a singer, not really, or at least she'd never one to sing where anyone might listen to her. It wasn't something that had been forbidden to her, because no one knew she'd ever sung, no one but herself… and Anya, a bit. Except Anya didn't remember everything. She remembered that there had been a time when her big sister would sing, beautiful lullabies in a variety of languages. Anya loved it when her big sister would sign her to sleep. She'd even asked Risa a couple of times why she no longer did it, why she'd never sung to her sons, her nephew and niece, like she would to her little sister… Risa would tell her she no longer sang, and that was it, no explanation.

It seemed like an odd choice to have made, seemingly for no reason. Except there was a reason, even if Anya couldn't remember it. She had been just five, five-years-old, hungry, exhausted, and almost terrified. The two girls had been traveling on their own for almost four weeks by then. Walking as much and for as long as they could every morning before stopping and taking cover during the hottest hours, foraging for some food; and then walking some more in the afternoon before finding some place to rest for the night. It was only a matter of time before something went wrong. And it happened that one night a group of bandits found them. It was awful, Anya was so young she knew nothing except that they were bad men, Risa for her part… she knew exactly what they did, what they intended with them. In the middle of the night, Anya had been too afraid to sleep, sobbing constantly, to the point where one of the bandits threatened to 'shut her up', so Risa did her best to comfort her, she began singing the first thing she could think of. And that was when the unthinkable happened:

At first Risa wasn't sure what was going on exactly. When one of the bandits, the one who'd been made to stand guard during the night, went and unlocked the cage where the girls had been thrown. He whispered to them to run… at first Risa hadn't trusted him, but he insisted, and then he referenced her song. As if something in the song had made him decide to let them go… Risa had no idea what was going on, but still she picked her little sister up and carried her out, shushing her as best she could on the way. The problem came when it was made obvious that one of the bandits was a very light sleeper. He woke as Risa stepped out of the cage, yelled at them. And then everyone else woke up.

It all became a hell of a fight in a matter of seconds. No one understood why one of them was defending them, apparently he'd never cared. And then he'd mentioned the song again. He'd been killed that night, had died covering them as Risa threw caution to the wind and ran straight into the forest, her sister in her arms. She didn't stop running for the rest of the night. Even then it took her several days to understand, at least in part, what had happened that night; the fact that her song had changed something primordial in that man. Had made a slaver, a man who'd never cared about the women and children he'd catch and sell, feel compassion for them and release them, made him willing to die for them. Having that kind of power… it terrified Risa, so much she never sang again… or at least not where anyone could hear her.

Truth was that every so often something would happen in Risa's life, things would become too much for her, the emotions too strong for her to hold them in, and the only way to let them out was to sing. So she'd walk away from the mansion, deep into the part of the forest that was still part of their property. And once she was far enough, once she was sure that no one would be nearby, no one could hear her. She'd let go…

Most often the cause for her singing was connected to her dreams. Those dreams she could never truly remember, nor could she let them go. They were so much a part of her, even if she couldn't hope to understand them, she wanted to believe one day she would, one day the truth would be revealed to her. She would learn what the places were she saw in those dreams, the people, the songs, the dances… who was the man she would dance with and sing for. She believed, she hoped, that one day she would know. And until that day came she would sing to the empty forest:

"Dancing bears, painted wings

Things I almost remember

And a song someone sings

Once upon a December"

"Someone holds me safe and warm

Horses prance through a silver storm

Figures dancing gracefully

Across my memory"

**xXx**

Risa first met Loki sometime in the eighties. He was going by Luka Hvedrungr, and while Risa knew right away that he was hiding something, she paid no mind to it. It's not like he was the only one. Eventually he trusted her enough to use some of his power in her presence, it was then that she named him Maverick and brought him to the Institute. He soon became a favorite of everyone there. The youngest children loved to see his tricks, to always be kept guessing about how he could do the things he did; while the older ones were thankful for his suggestions and pointers as to how to better use their own abilities.

Charles and Erik knew he was not a mutant, but never brought it up. Also, while it wasn't easy to connect with his mind, the telepath could see enough to tell that being at the Institute helped Luka as much as it did their young students and refugees. Erik didn't quite like not knowing everything about the man, but he'd long since learned to compromise. He was also quite sure that his eldest would have never allowed the man anywhere close to her, much less the rest of them, if she had not been beyond sure that he was trustworthy. And her position as the most powerful Empath in the world certainly allowed her to be sure.

It was sometime in the late seventies, early eighties that they found out mutants weren't the only Gifted in the world. There were the evos… though Charles was quite sure they were mutants themselves, just a different 'strand' of evolution, so-to-speak. They also seemed to be pretty new, unlike mutants who'd existed for several centuries at the very least. Then there were the skin-walkers. Raven and her team (and others that came to do the same thing later on, like the Maximoff twins, Kurt, etc.) had found several groups across the world, all who had the same ability: to 'shed' their human skin and turn into animals. The one thing that seemed to vary was what animal they turned into, though the most common were wolves. Some saw it as a blessing, others as a curse, but it ran in family lines and they tended to gather into packs, the position of alpha passing by lineage or by power. The Flowers in Mexico were young women who claimed to be descendants of those blessed by some Prehispanic goddess, they had all the same ability, to influence nature; and were lead by one girl who was said to be either a descendant or the reincarnation of the goddess herself. They also all had male guardians, most who could influence the elements and lived to protect the girls. And of course, there were the magic users, though aside from knowing they existed, and that there were different kinds in various parts of the world, they knew very little about them.

Most didn't seem to care about integrating with the world at large. Choosing instead to keep to their secluded communities; even those who chose to live as part of the 'human world' would keep their differences a secret from those who weren't family, or the same as them. It made Charles wonder sometimes if integration was possible at all, or if it was better to continue as they had until then, living in hiding. It rankled Erik, of course, living in the shadows; but he knew there was little that could be done. He wasn't about to wage a war, not only because (much as he hated it) he knew they wouldn't win, but because he knew it wouldn't be fair. For every human out there who might be like Trask or Stryker; there was one who would be like Jenny (their elementary teacher, she'd come to their attention because her daughter was one of the most powerful telekinetics in the world, and the woman knew and loved her daughter with all her heart; had never feared her or her gift for even a second) or like his own Anya. In fact, the numbers kept growing in the latter, as Anya, and later on others made sure that the humans with mutant family understood what was going on with their relatives, the good and bad, that it wasn't a curse but a gift; helped them understand and accept the change. Erik honestly did not know where he would be, where they all would be, if it weren't for Anya… and Risa.

It surprised absolutely no one when Risa and Luka became lovers in the late eighties. While he couldn't seem to be able to visit more than twice or thrice a year, a few days at a time, there was just a connection between those two, everyone could see it. It didn't even surprise them when she announced her pregnancy in the Fall of 91'.

Kurt and Jason were the most eager. Even though they were both grown men by then, Kurt being almost twenty-eight, while Jason had just left his teens behind. They were both excited at the prospect of having a little sister.

Risa's dreams got stronger and clearer as her pregnancy advanced. Some mornings she would wake up and feel like she almost had the name of someone on her lips, though it was quickly lost. Some things she came to understand though; like the fact that all the dreams were connected, as if part of a single ongoing vision or… or memories of another life… The part most people noticed though, was how she took to humming quietly as she walked through the rose-patch Vera (Anya's sister in law) and her daughter Ivy had created years earlier.

And then, finally, the day came. On March 20th, 1992, at 3:47 am, Marisa Ruth Eisenhardt-Xavier gave birth to her daughter, naming her Rose Alfdis Eisenhardt-Xavier. It had been a long, hard labor, having lasted since sunset the previous day. There had also been some concern since, in the late stages of her pregnancy Risa had been easily affected by the cold, dressing more warmly and heavily than any previous winter. The Institute's maids had made sure to keep the hearth in her rooms going at all times, and the students did their best to ensure doors and windows remained closed. Everyone loved Risa very much and the last thing they wanted was for her to become sick, or worse. Even then, when her labor began Risa had been so very cold, her skin practically freezing and her body shaking even with the fire on and a number of blankets on her. It had gotten to the point where every single mutant who had a gift connected to fire or heat made a point to be in the room and make it as warm as they possibly could. And neither the midwife (there was no way she was having her baby in a hospital when they had no idea how different she might be, considering her parents' genetics), nor Anya and Raven (both who'd insisted on being with her to assist with anything they could) complained, despite the fact that the room probably felt like a sauna to them. They only hoped it'd help.

It did, almost as soon as Rose was born, Risa's body temperature began stabilizing.

"It was her." The midwife (a mutant with a small, passive gift) announced. "She's a couple of degrees above normal, and look at her eyes."

They looked dazzling, a mix of red, orange and black, shifting like a living flame was shining from inside them, from inside her…

It took them a while for everyone else to realize Risa wasn't talking, she wasn't moving… in fact, she was doing nothing except looking at her daughter while the midwife cleaned her up and expertly swaddled her; except her eyes looked odd, as if she were not quite there in that moment.

"Risa!/Phei!" Raven's and Anya's cries and sudden panic made Charles and Erik rush into the room in a hurry.

"What's going on?" Erik demanded.

"What's wrong?" Charles asked almost exactly at the same time.

"I don't know…" Raven began, sounding so lost, like she hadn't since she was ten-years-old and breaking into the Xavier house in search for food.

"Give her the baby." Anya ordered.

The midwife either agreed with her or simply didn't see a reason for arguing, for she did exactly that. For all of a second Risa didn't seem to react at all, and then the moment passed and she cradled her newborn baby into her arms, holding her carefully against her chest and relaxing into the mound of pillows and blankets at her back. No one dare say a word, everyone just waiting with baited breath, trying to understand what was going on… and then Risa began to hum. The same soft, quiet melody she'd been humming through her whole pregnancy. The surprise turned to shock when it didn't stop there. It began as a whisper, but ever so slowly her voice grew both in volume and in confidence, until suddenly she was outright singing, her hazel eyes shining with a never before seen light, and not for a second straying from the beautiful baby girl in her arms:

"Someone holds me safe and warm

Horses prance through a silver storm

Figures dancing gracefully

Across my memory"

"Far away, long ago

Glowing dim as an ember

Things my heart used to know

Things it yearns to remember"

"And a song someone sings

Once upon a December"

In the silence that held after the end of the song, as everyone both inside and outside of the room tried to wrap their heads around what had just happened. None of them but Anya had heard Risa sing before; and after having done so, they just couldn't understand why she didn't do so, and often. She had such a beautiful voice… They were all so enchanted by it, by the song, that none noticed the moment when someone else stepped out of the shadows and straight into the room, not until he was standing at the foot of the bed…

"A'maelamin (My beloved)…" Luka breathed out, in a tone of a man who's just found an oasis after a lifetime wandering a seemingly endless dessert.

It was his voice that made her look away from the baby in her arms from the first time, a single word crossing her lips:

"Fintalëharyon (Trick-prince)…"

No one had the slightest idea of what either of them had just said. Even Charles, who liked to keep a mental list of the language his sister learned (even if he didn't have the gift for them she did… his telepathy might allow him to bypass language barriers and communicate when it was necessary, but that did not mean he knew the languages); even Erik, who knew a number of languages and could speak them like a native (there was a reason he'd taken over his daughter's class when the midwife insisted she spend the last couple of weeks of her pregnancy resting) had no idea what language those two had just spoken.

"Risa…" Charles began, not knowing what else to say.

"Schatzi (treasure)," Erik murmured in turn. "Is everything alright?"

"I remember." Risa said for all answer, in English that time.

"What?" Practically everyone asked at the same time, confused.

"What do you remember?" Anya clarified the question.

The answer was one that seemed to tell all, and nothing at all at the same time:

"Everything…"

**xXx**

The story came out eventually, and it was one no one could have ever expected. The story of an elven princess, set to be queen, until she falls in love with the second prince of another realm. Out of love for him she chooses to abdicate, weeks before she'd have been officially crowned. Things get complicated for a while, as it's revealed the prince was adopted and how the King intended for him to return to his own realm one day and rule there. But in the end love is stronger than politics or any plans. The love of two parents who love the prince as much as if he were theirs by birth (as much as they love their eldest); the love of a crown prince who loves his little brother regardless of their difference in heritage; the love of two people who have been matched souls as long as the stars have been shining in the skies…

But like many real stories, as beautiful as some parts might be, not everything is perfect. The princess and prince have ninety five years of almost perfect marriage, and a daughter who is the light of their lives. But shortly before the elven princess is to give birth to their second-born, she is attacked by a crazy enchantress obsessed with the elder prince. Her last plan had been thwarted by the elven princess, and that turns the spell-weaver murderous against her. After several attempts it all ends with the tragic death of the princess and her unborn baby girl.

The prince avenges her, but there's nothing he can do for his match, or their baby; he barely manages to save their eldest, who ended badly hurt in an attempt to save her mother. He goes almost insane with pain and grief, on a path of self-destruction, unable to handle the loss of his match, the emptiness on the other side of their bond… until his father makes a desperate choice: to make him forget. Hoping that forgetting the tragedy will allow him to forget the pain.

It doesn't quite work as intended. The prince still acts out, he knows there's something wrong, that something is missing, but he no longer remembers what. And since not just he, but everyone has been made to forget (so no one would trigger his memories, either on purpose or by accident) they no longer know why he acts the way he does. Even then, he manages to survive until, almost nine hundred years later, the elven princess is reborn, in the middle of horror and tragedy, to a gypsy mother that doesn't live to hold her in her arms, a miracle baby who manages to survive against all odds…

"You're… you're her…" Raven mumbled, flabbergasted. "This elven princess…"

"Tinúviel." Risa clarified with a gentle smile. "Well she… I was born Lalaith Mirloth, but my love gave me the name Tinúviel. And I chose to make that my name when I married him. I became Princess Tinúviel of Alfheim and Asgard, wife of Loki, mother of Helena Miriel…"

"What does it mean?" Anya asked, curious. "The name… Tinúviel?"

"Literally it means daughter of the dusk." Risa explained. "But in the Ljósálfar tradition, ages ago, that was a very elegant way to call a nightingale…"

"Or one with their voice." Luka… Loki, offered. "And thus she became Princess Tinúviel, the lady with the most beautiful voice in all the Realms…"

"Why hadn't you sung in so long?" Anya asked the question that had been in her mind since hearing her sing to the baby, and in some ways, even before that.

"You hadn't…?" Loki blurted out, clearly confused. "But I've… I've heard you! In the woods. It's what drew me to you in the first place!"

Risa couldn't help herself, she laughed. So much for making sure no one would hear her! Then again, perhaps that was how things were meant to be all along.

"I was afraid." She admitted, turning to look straight at her little sister. "You don't remember Annie, but when we were in Europe, before Charles and Raven found us, we spent weeks on our own, and one day, bandits found us. They were bad people, so very bad… they wanted to sell us, like merchandise. You were terrified, and they threatened to hurt you, to force you to shut up. So I tried to sing you to sleep. It worked, but as I later found out, it also did something else. One of the bandits, he opened the cage we were in. He let us go, and when the others woke up and tried to get us back, he defended us, he died covering our escape." She exhaled. "He didn't do so because he was a good man. None of them were good men. No, I…"

"You pushed your emotions onto him." Loki nodded, he was probably the only one who truly understood what had happened in that moment. "Essentially made him feel what you were feeling. And that made him help you."

"Exactly!" Risa nodded. "Now… now I know that is not something bad. That I didn't force him into dying for me, for us. I just… he'd probably never felt fear, or compassion in all his life, and when he did, that made him do the things he did. And the change was so extreme he couldn't even find a way to protect himself."

"Oh my dear…" Charles murmured, realizing where it was all going, and really, he'd felt exactly the same once, when first realizing how much power he truly had.

"I know now I didn't kill him." Risa forced herself to explain fully. "But back then… back then I was terrified of what had happened. I had no idea how much had been on me, how much on him. All I knew was that my singing had caused it, somehow…"

"So you stopped singing." Anya finished for her.

"I stopped singing where others could hear me." Risa clarified. "I was afraid of how my singing might affect others, but I still felt the… need to sing every so often. So I'd go into the woods and sing to myself, where I believed no one could hear me."

"Except Loki did." Raven pointed out.

"Yes, he did." Risa smiled despite the tears shining on her lashes. "Now that I have all my past-life's memories I know that it's all part of my empathy. I can feel other's emotions, I can show them what I feel, what others feel. I can also make emotions stronger or weaker. What I did to that man when I was ten… I made him feel things he never had before and he didn't know how to react to that. He tried to counter the fear I made him know I was feeling, by letting me go, but he'd never felt like that himself, and thus he didn't know what to do. And so when things turned against him, he couldn't defend himself… he got himself killed."

"You did what you did to protect yourself, and your sister." Erik reassured her, a hand on her shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with that."

Just like he'd done things he wasn't always proud of in defense of his family (and that didn't just mean his daughters, but Charles, Johann, Django, Nina, Raven, Kurt, Jason, and in some way every single person that was part of their community). Charles, Raven and most of the X-Men were in exactly the same position so they all understood that while killing would never truly be the first option, they had a right to protect themselves and those they loved from those whose only desire was to cause pain and destruction…

"Tut kamav dadro (Love you papa)…" Risa whispered as Erik inclined his head to kiss her temple softly.

"Me too schatzi (treasure), me too." Erik whispered back as he embraced her with one arm.

They might not have been what some would consider a normal family, but to her? To her they were more than perfect.

**xXx**

There were days when Loki did not know how he could stand living in Asgard anymore. Being away from his (reborn) match, from his daughter(s), from all those who loved him and accepted him, every part of him. But then he'd remember that as bad as things might have gotten, he still loved his parents and his brother, he couldn't just abandon them. He could only hope that one day they'd remember too.

In any case, he'd taken to spending almost as much time on Midgard as he did on Asgard. It was the one good thing about the last nine centuries, everyone had gotten so used to his absences, believing he was either hiding after some prank gone awry, or preparing his next 'trick'. It was demeaning in some ways, but in others it allowed him to go where he will, do whatever he may want with Asgard being none the wiser.

Of course that was, until Thor and his friends went and made such a mess of things that Loki decided he'd had enough.

He'd tried! With the stars as his witnesses that he'd tried! To understand his father better, to better show his mother he loved her, to be there for his brother… But Thor was just so wild, so reckless! His friends were the worst enablers in all of Yggdrasil! And no one seemed to realize it except him! They were all so used to getting away with things because they were friends with the crown prince! (And because, in the end, Loki loved his brother too much to let him get killed in one of his many stupid pseudo-quests) It was clear that none of them understood what it was to have consequences for their actions; of course, they understood Loki going through them, but never them. And somehow they'd managed to convince themselves that it was because they did no wrong. Rather than because someone (namely Loki) was always saving their asses, or because those who would force the consequences upon them either were too afraid of hurting the crown prince of Asgard and his friends, or when he did, he was then labeled an enemy of Asgard, and once again it seemed like Thor and his group could do no wrong!

It had actually begun the same way, Like so many of Thor and his friends' ill-fated quests. And Loki had so hoped that the mess with the dragon in Nidavellir would have taught them all a lesson, but it clearly hadn't! A part of the young prince wondered if it had ever occurred to his parents, when they chose to erase his match from all Aesir minds, the consequences it'd have. Not just for him, but for everyone. They hadn't just forgotten his wife, their elven princess, his daughter's mother (and he was never again going to wonder what anyone thought then had happened for him to have a daughter… the things that had been implied, it was an impugn upon the honor of all of them! One he only forgave because they knew no better, and it was his own family's fault!); the enchantment had also erased everything she'd ever brought about: like Sif's friendship, the Warriors' respect, Thor's maturity… they were all gone. And if Loki hadn't recovered all his memories he'd have believed such things to be impossible. Except they weren't impossible, just forgotten, and they were all the less because of that. At least the son of his heart: Fenrir, still had his own beloved: the lady Ylva, even if she probably did not remember ever being close to Loki and his match, at least they had each other. At least neither of them were completely alone, like Loki had been, until finding his beloved nightingale again, singing alone, among the trees…

Loki didn't even know whose 'brilliant' idea it had been to go there. To that useless little realm, so dangerously close to Jotunheim… he knew something was going to go wrong. He knew it… and yet the idiots didn't listen (when did they ever?), and if Thor even for a moment considered that Loki might have a reason for his reticence, it was all lost the moment that oaf Fandral made the suggestion that his hesitance might be caused by cowardice. As if! Perhaps he should have let him die, or that idiot Volstagg. Perhaps a death would have made them learn the lesson once and for all… but if either of them had died, Thor would have never forgiven himself, and great as Loki's exasperation might be, he would never hurt his brother.

He didn't even know who's idea it had been to go there. To that stupid, little, nameless realm. There was supposed to be a monster, and of course the 'valiant Aesir warriors' had to go and slay it, protect the people of Yggdrasil! Never mind that there was no proof there was any such monster, really, aside from the stories told by some really drunk merchants they had no reason to believe it existed at all! Still, they were all nuts, provoking each other and Thor had that odd obsession to prove he was brave and mighty and… Loki honestly had no idea why Thor was like that, he hadn't been like that, not even before meeting Tinúviel! Then again, they'd been quite young then, so who knows? Maybe that was who he'd have been if he'd never met the elven princess… and there was no point in thinking about that.

As it happened, there was a monster in that realm. A Siren. The complication, the moment the creature began singing Thor and the Warriors were under her thrall. Sif and Loki weren't, and that fact, instead of endearing him to her, somehow made her more suspicious. At least he managed to convince her to keep guard over her friends after they'd restrained them while Loki himself dealt with the creature. That part was easy enough, what wasn't was when killing her freed not just Thor and his friends, but also all the others she'd been keeping as her slaves, most whom were Jotun. It all turned into a battle very fast.

_Things weren't that bad, until Thor took an ice blade to his flank. Loki's reaction was instinctive. He had been fighting on the other side of the glade, but the blonde's cry made the younger prince react immediately: he teleported to his brother's side. Loki didn't even think about it as he bodily pushed the Jotun away, using a concentrated burst of magic to effectively vaporize him. Then he turned and used his bare hand to pull the ice blade out of Thor. Didn't realize what a mistake that was until he threw the broken blade aside and then Sif began screaming, at him. _

_At first Loki thought she'd been hurt too. But instead she was pointing her swords at him. _

"_Sif, what in the abyss!" He yelled, confused. _

"_Step away monster!" She yelled at him. _

_He realized then that she wasn't the only one staring at him, they all were. Only it wasn't exactly at him, but at his hands… his blue hands. _

"_Heimdall get us out of here!" The young prince called loudly with all his authority, willing the Gatekeeper to hear him and obey. _

_He knew that they were too distracted. Even if it seemed like they had defeated all their enemies, more might yet come and he wasn't about to risk it. _

_They landed in a sprawl in the middle of the Observatory, but Loki didn't give them the chance to say a word, either for or against him. He held Thor tightly in his arms (after making sure he'd completely gone back to his Aesir form) and teleported the two of them out of there and straight to the palace's infirmary. Lady Eir and her attendants were beyond shocked by their sudden appearance but a word from Loki was enough to get them working. Thor was priority. _

"Loki!" The voices calling his name briefly pulled the spellweaver out of his memories. "Loki come back! Loki!"

But Loki wasn't going back, not for anything, not after what they had done…

_Loki was almost sure he hadn't even taken breath from the moment he practically dropped into the middle of the healing rooms, bleeding Thor in his arms; not until Lady Eir declared her work finished and that the blonde prince would be alright. _

_He was just beginning to relax when suddenly Sif was there, and the Warriors 3, and a squad of soldiers. They weren't Einherjar, but still. _

"_Whats the meaning of this?" Loki demanded. _

_And he wasn't the only one. For mother and father had entered through a different door, practically at the same time. _

"_He's a monster!" Fandral yelled. "He tried to kill Thor!" _

"_What…?!" The sorcerer couldn't believe that the so-called warrior was really accusing him of such a thing. And with no proof! "I'd never hurt Thor! I tried to help him! I brought him here to be healed!" _

"_He's a monster." Volstagg pressed. "A Jotun!" _

_That one he didn't even try to deny. Didn't see a point. It still took him by surprise when the warriors pointed their weapons at him. Loki froze, turning to the side instinctively, looking for his parents: his mother looked horrified, and his father… he was just staring at Loki, as if studying him. He made no attempt to approach, to stop the soldiers. It was then that the adopted prince realized the terrible truth, that no matter how much he might love his family, that did not mean they'd feel the same. _

_Loki exhaled in defeat, something his mother noticed. Her eyes widened, and Loki knew she must have realized something had changed, she might have even suspected what he was going to do next. It did not matter. Loki knew he could not expect any help, from anyone._

_´Perhaps it's better this way…' He thought to himself, turning slightly to glance at the immobile form of his brother on the healer's bed. _

_He jumped in place, teleporting out of the infirmary before his feet touched the ground again. He knew he couldn't shadow-walk out of the palace. Or at least, not out of the deeper, shielded parts of it. But that was okay. He knew it wouldn't take long for others to follow him, so he rushed to his rooms, taking the things he couldn't do without and throwing them into his pocket dimension before stepping onto the balcony (he could hear hurried footsteps, his time was running out). He teleported out of his balcony and onto a nearby rooftop, and then onto a garden._

It wasn't easy. The Royal rooms were in the deepest parts of the palace. But with some judicious use of teleportation, Loki managed to make it to one of the outer gardens. By that point he was quite sure that they must have every soldier, Einherjar and Valkyrie combing the palace looking for him. They'd probably begin searching through the rest of Asgard soon enough. Didn't matter, it's not like he was planning on staying in the so-called Realm Eternal.

"Loki!" That was the voice of his mother, Loki knew that much.

That actually made him hesitate. Just for a moment, but he couldn't help it. Regardless of what might have happened, Frigg would always be his mother, he'd always love her.

The rush of more than a pair of feet reminded him that she wasn't alone, that they were after him, for being a monster. It didn't matter how much he might love his mother, how much she might love him, as long as some insisted on seeing him as a monster, he'd never be able to stay.

Frigg's form had just appeared on the archway leading from the palace to the garden, her eyes laid on her son, just for a moment, for a fraction of a second, before he took a step back, and dropped into the shadows.

Queen Frigg rushed to the spot where her youngest had been standing just a moment before, but she knew it was pointless, there was no way they'd be able to catch him, to find him. Not if he didn't want to be found. She'd lost her son…

**xXx**

Risa knew the exact moment when things went wrong with Loki. She could feel it through their bond. And she wasn't the only one, judging by the way Rose left her friends and rushed to her side; then again, Rose was ten and already as good a precog as Destiny. The older Seer was also sure that the girl would one day surpass her, surpass every cognitive on the planet. And that was before taking into consideration that Rose was also a fire elemental.

In any case, the two were left to wait in a secluded corner of the rose garden. It didn't take long. From one moment to the next Loki was there, practically stumbling out of the shadows. Risa caught him into her arms the moment he was fully out of the Shadow Plane, and he was so distracted, so unbalanced after whatever had happened to him, that the two went down on the grass, neither of them caring a bit. Rose didn't say a word either, she just knelt beside them and joined the family hug.

Mother and daughter made sure to be there, and even the boys, while they weren't exactly Loki's children, he was still their mother's husband, and that made him the closest either of them had to a father, so they did their best to show they were there for him. It was Erik who pulled him out of his funk in the end:

"It's not easy, being called a monster." He said straight out. "Worse even is looking at yourself in a mirror and wondering if they might be right."

They were in the rose garden. He knew his son-in-law had spent a lot of time there, according to Risa, because it reminded him of other such gardens from their past, it brought him peace. Erik was unsure if anything could bring true peace to Loki in his circumstances. It didn't matter that the mutant didn't know what had happened exactly, that was private and he respected that, even Charles had made a point of staying as much out of the sorcerer's mind as possible until he was better. Didn't mean Erik couldn't look at Loki and recognize the look in his eyes, he'd seen it way too many times in a mirror…

"You cannot possible begin to understand…" Loki began, low and dangerous.

"What has Marisa told you about her mother?" Erik asked in turn.

"That she was your wife." Loki began enlisting. "Her adopted mother, Anya's birth one, left you after you both believed them to be dead. Before they became Xaviers."

"Yeah… there's more to the story than that." Erik exhaled. "That day in Ukraine, when the hostel went down… I didn't know that Marisa had managed to get herself and her little sister out. All I knew was that the place was gone, that they were gone, and it was all their fault. Of the villagers, the humans who'd dared to get in my way, to keep me from getting to my daughters. They called me a monster, yet they'd just let two little, innocent girls die! I was furious, beyond that even, I wanted them to pay, to suffer like they had made my babies suffer. So I unleashed my whole power on them, on the whole town. To a level I'd never used before, never have since. I tore the place apart, left no building standing, no person alive… except for my family." He exhaled, closing his eyes briefly, tightly. "Magda watched me do all that. She… I'm not sure, I think… I think it broke her, somehow. She blamed me for the loss of the girls, called me a monster. She ran away from me. I went after her. For months I kept trying to find her… until I realized that she was running from me, she was terrified of me. So I let her go. I let her go and instead focused all my grief, all my fury, into hunting Nazis. I went on doing that for more than seven years, until Charles found me, saved me from drowning off the coast of Miami while trying to stop Shaw. In the following months he both helped me complete my mission, taking down the man who'd brought so much pain and destruction into my life, and reunited me with my daughters…" Tears were falling down Erik's eyes but he did not care. "Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to Charles. And of course, to Marisa and Anya. I wouldn't be who I am today without them."

"I wouldn't be who I am without my Nightingale, or our daughters either." Loki agreed quietly. "How do you do it? No longer see yourself as a monster?"

"Who says I don't?" Erik asked in return. "The only thing that has changed since all those years ago, is that now I know who I am. I know what I'm capable of. I know how far I'm willing to go, and for whom. What happened that day in Ukraine…? I know I could do it again, and if the life of someone I care for, a member of my family, ever depends on it I will do that, and worse; I will do it and never regret it. And if that makes me a monster so be it. I'm no longer the kind of man to be ashamed, to be afraid of who I am. And the people I love, who love me, they understand that, they accept me exactly as I am. What more could I, could any of us, ever ask for?"

"What more indeed?" Loki echoed softly.

The change wasn't instantaneous, but it certainly helped. The next time Erik came across Risa, his daughter embraced him and kissed his cheek tenderly, whispering quietly her thanks in Romani (as a way to show how much it meant to her). Erik just returned the gesture, they were family, and helping each other was what family did (and loving each other, but that was a given, wasn't it?).

**xXx**

It took several weeks for the Aesir to track down Loki. And the only reason they managed was because he'd left the safety of the Institute. It was something Loki had put into place even before Rose Alfdis's birth, once he'd come to know the people there, come to care for them; his most powerful ward ever created had been set on the place. It ensured that people with ill will couldn't enter, couldn't even find the place (they'd need to have more power than Loki had poured into it, and that was unlikely, as he was the most powerful spellweaver in the Nine Realms), it also made them invisible to other beings, including Heimdall, and whoever might try to use magic, science or technology to track any of them was inside the estate.

So for as long as Loki stayed inside the Institute no one in Asgard could find him. Heimdall had long since accepted his 'blind-spot' when it came to the second prince (he didn't like it, actually hated it in fact, but there was nothing he could do). But even all of Queen Frigg's spells had failed, until suddenly one day they worked…

It was Kurt's fault, for a value of it (though there was no maliciousness in it). Some of the young mutants had been talking about the carnival that had settled nearby, Kurt wanted to go. Loki had long since made him an amulet that could hide his appearance, allowing him a much greater liberty than he'd ever known before (though even before, he'd gone places sometimes, with Jason, who'd use his own gift to make sure no one would notice Kurt's 'differences'). He also didn't want to go alone. Seeing his eagerness, Loki couldn't say no, so off they went.

Jason's wheelchair could be a bit of a problem (no one knew what ailed him exactly, but he could never stand for long, though he didn't seem to mind either, happy to have his family push him around, and using Medea to go where his body couldn't), but no one in the family was bothered by this. So off they went.

The carnival wasn't quite as big or impressive as some might have expected, but Kurt, Jason and Rose were so happy, and their joy was contagious. Rose in particular took great delight in being there with both of her parents. While Loki had visited often, he had never before stayed with them for such a long period of uninterrupted time. Risa too enjoyed that, much as she might hate the way her beloved had been hurt, she couldn't help but be happy at the possibility that he might be staying, permanently, with them.

One moment they were giggling and chuckling, particularly at Loki's face as he tried to clean it from the cotton candy his daughter had insisted he try; only he had no idea how to eat the thing, or even how to hold it, had ended with more around his face than in his mouth. Had it been anyone other than his family the trickster would have been quite affected by the others laughing, that he was the reason; but they were his family, and he knew they weren't mocking him, it was all in good fun in the end. Also, if in the past he'd believed his match's laughter to sound like crystal bells, when his daughter's own was added to it… he was sure there couldn't be anything more perfect in the universe (except perhaps if Helena could spend longer with them, but their eldest had her own responsibilities which she couldn't shirk, it wasn't easy being the Queen of the Dead after all).

One moment everything was fun and joy, a perfect family moment, and the next…

"Incoming." Jason announced, suddenly deadly serious.

Jason wasn't a telepath, not really, his power lay with illusions; but in order to make people believe those illusions, he needed to touch their minds. So, even if he did not read them, he was almost always aware of every mind in his range. And he was certainly aware the moment that several non-human minds entered that range.

Loki and Risa detected them but a fraction of a second later. Their reactions were instinctive. As Risa stepped back, pulling Jason's chair with her with one hand, while drawing Rose closer with the other. Kurt took position around them, one hand on his mother, the other on Jason, with both Jason and their mom keeping a hand on Rose Kurt knew he'd be able to teleport them out of there at a moment's notice. Loki stepped forward instead, conjuring a couple of blades with just a thought. He was still in his human clothes, saw no need to change, not yet.

A small burst of Risa's empathy ensured that no civilians would get involved, even as they all watched the more than half a dozen figures approach.

Risa identified them all the moment she laid eyes on them: Thor was at the front of the group, with his four friends; and behind them: the King and Queen…

*My love…* Risa began, not quite able to find the words.

She didn't need to, Loki understood exactly what she was thinking, for it was in his mind as well, both equally shocked about it. They couldn't remember the last time Odin Allfather had chosen to leave the Realm Eternal (the last time that hadn't involved a war).

"My son…" There was so much feeling in Lady Frigg's voice as the two words crossed her lips, so much love…

"Mother…" Loki's response was automatic.

For a moment Risa felt like she might drown in all the love those two held for one another. They did say there was no love stronger than a mother's, after all… yet that did not change the fact that she wasn't the only one there.

"Brother, what…?"

It would be impossible to know for sure what the crown prince might have been about to say. It was obvious that in that moment he became aware of those standing behind Loki, and that left him speechless.

"Loki, it's time to stop this nonsense…"

That was as far as Sif got, whatever chastisement she'd been working towards was completely lost with the sound of the impact of flesh on flesh. And it wasn't just that, the warrior-lady's face was actually turned sharply to a side by the force of a slap. Most would be surprised that a mortal, a midgardian woman, had managed such a feat. Not Loki, he knew his match had pulled on just enough of his own power through their bond to allow her to do that. Risa had done that, she'd also used her empathy to project hurt at Sif, to ensure she'd feel it. It wasn't the pain of a physical wound, no, it was the hurt the Nightingale had sensed through his Maverick when the Aesir had called him a monster, twice. Truth was that Risa hadn't actually planned to do that. It was just… the moment she heard Sif begin talking, with that condescending tone, as if she considered herself superior to Risa's own beloved, and for what? The blood in their veins?! Risa couldn't stand it, not from anyone, she wouldn't.

Hands reached for weapons immediately, and Loki's aura became visible. They were all standing on the edge of a knife…

"Stand down!" the Queen ordered sharply. "We're not here to fight!"

"She attacked first!" Fandral snapped.

All mutants rolled their eyes. Did Fandral not realize how much like a preschooler complaining to a teacher he'd just sounded? It was ridiculous!

"Yes I did." Risa refused to stand down, she stared straight at Sif as she spoke, though the warning was meant for everyone: "And the next time you, any of you, refer to my match as a monster I will do much worse than that love tap. I will teach you why, in this world, I'm the one called goddess…"

It was the closest thing she'd had to an actual code-name before Loki had come into all their lives and she officially became Nightingale. The call-name of 'Goddess' had originated in the fact that, according to practically every X-Men, she had to be one in order to be able to put up with both Charles and Erik whenever a new topic of debate (or more like intense argument) came up. And while both men might be her family and she respected them greatly, that didn't mean she wasn't up for telling them when they were being idiots (mostly whenever they took their arguing so far they got dangerously close to fighting among themselves). Anya was liable to get all morose, perhaps even cry, whenever something like that happened; while Raven favored a more 'proactive' approach (which essentially meant she smacked them both). Risa was able to remain calm, point out what each side had right, what they had wrong and push them into a compromise; most of the time she even managed to make them believe it was all their idea too. Of course both men knew what she did, but as it had saved them a great deal of mental and emotional grief, none of them would be complaining any time soon.

"Who do you think you are?" Sif demanded, offended.

"I am Marisa Ruth Eisenhardt-Xavier, the goddess, the Nightingale." The brunette announced, standing to her full height. "Daughter of Erik Magnus Eisenhardt-Lehnsherr, sister of Charles Francis and Raven Nova Xavier, sister to Anya Willow Eisenhardt-Xavier; mother to Kurt, Jason and Rose Alfdis Eisenhardt-Xavier. Wife and match of Loki."

With such a long and elaborate introduction it actually took a moment for everyone to catch up with the last part of it.

"What?!" Disbelief was probably the most prevalent emotion.

"It's impossible for you to be his match." Odin was in complete denial.

"Why?" Loki challenged. "Because you refuse to accept that a mortal might be my match, or because you believe my match to be dead?"

That through them all (even Odin) for a loop.

"I am also the reincarnation of Lalaith Mirloth, daughter of Lamirima, sister of Merilwen; renamed Tinúviel, match and consort of Loki Odinson, Princess of Alfheim and Asgard, Goddess of Compassion, and mother of Helena Miriel Lokidottir."

For a few moments, a handful of tense, seemingly neverending seconds no one said a thing and then… it was as if something had broken, like metaphorical glass. Thor blinked, and Loki (whose eyes were fixed straight of him, believing that if an attack came their way, it was likely to start with him) could have almost sworn he saw a shadow leave those blue eyes and then…

"Brother…" Loki refused to believe anything had changed, until the next words left the blonde's mouth: "Oh brother how we've wronged you…"

A beat, two, three, and then…

"Can I say hi to grandma and grandpa and uncle Thor now?"

The question was asked with all the eagerness, joy and innocence that could be expected from a child; and it broke the tension like nothing else could have.

It was a bit anticlimactic, considering how much several of them had been preparing themselves for a fight. But still, a welcome thing, realizing they wouldn't have to fight those that were meant to be friends and family after all.

Words were exchanged, apologies made, explanations given; not all was forgiven, nor should it have been. But at least it was a start, a hope that things might be better than they had been for the last too many years.

The one thing the Aesir, particularly Thor and Queen Frigg regretted, was learning that Loki would not be going back to Asgard. He'd no idea if whatever had broken the enchantment in those there might have worked with those on the Realm Eternal too, but in the end he didn't really care. Asgard wasn't home to him anymore, hadn't been for decades (probably centuries). Also, he had a family right there in Midgard, with Risa, Rose and the boys; even if Kurt and Jason weren't his blood, they were as much his sons as Rose was, and he wasn't going to forsake any of them.

**xXx**

Time… something that couldn't be denied, yet wasn't felt in exactly the same way by everyone. They all knew it passed, whether they be mortal or immortal (or so long lived as to be seen as such), time ignored no one. And yet while it was a fact it existed, and the same measure of it applied to every living creature. It wasn't felt the same by everyone in the universe. So many phrases had been created to refer to that fact: 'seconds extending into eternity', 'moments that seemed to last forever', 'days, or months or years that passed and felt like no time at all'…

That was how it felt for some of those in the Xavier Institute. Those that the younger generations had taken to calling the 'Ironheart', mainly because they all carried the name Eisenhardt, either by birth (like Erik and Anya), adoption (like Risa) or by choice (like Charles). The four of them, the four of them were the very core of their crazy and twisted family, of the Institute and, on many ways, of the mutant Community as a whole. A community that had managed to remain hidden in plain sight for more than half a century… until the day that Thor Odinson and his friends arrived to the estate, bearing news that would change everything.

"What do you mean an alien invasion is coming?" Django cried out, horrified.

One of his hands went instantly to his daughter's shoulders, fearing for her. She was one of the newest batch of recruits for the X-Men, not even twenty-years-old yet; he wanted nothing more than to hide her away with the children and the noncombatants, but his Lorna had gotten the stubbornness from… pretty much every member of their family. There was no way she would stand back when so many of their family would be fighting. And neither would he, it didn't matter if Django was baseline human, no powers at all, he knew how to shoot, had made a point of learning, much like his own mother once did when she was young. He wouldn't be hiding away while his family fought for all of their lives.

"We knew something was coming." Rose reminded them, vaguely gesturing to Irene and herself. "We might not have known it was aliens but…"

She shrugged and everyone understood such things were details and didn't change the fact that they'd known a battle was coming, a big one. Then again, Rose had long since surpassed Destiny, and every other precog the X-Men had ever come across, some couldn't help but wonder if perhaps she had known about the aliens and had chosen to keep it to herself. Then again, the Sight was her gift, and it was her choice how much to share, or not, from what she saw. And in all the years she'd been active as a Seer Rose Alfdis, code-named Chaos Rose, had never lead them wrong, so they all trusted her.

"So, will we all be going?" A female voice with a southern accent inquired.

It was Rogue, or Marie, Risa's and Loki's youngest adopted child. They'd met when the feral mutant, Logan, had brought her around the mansion after having her hide in his truck, she'd been on the streets since having to flee her home, following the initial manifestation of her mutation. Logan knew Risa and Loki, the two of them, with some help from Rose and Charles, were the only reason he had any memories at all, that he wasn't still the lost man he'd been right after the mess in Three Mile Island in the nineties. He trusted them, so he decided that if anyone could help Marie, it was them. It was a complete accident that brought them to the discovery that the girl's mutation didn't work quite right on Risa and Rose (the draw was slow, it didn't hurt and the contact was easy to break) and not at all on Loki (or Helena, when she happened to be around). It was Rose who first referred to the younger girl as sis, and the rest just took it from there.

A decade later and the young woman had Master Degrees in Literature and History, offers from several universities for either a position as professor or in one of their doctorate programs, and she was the field-leader of the junior team of X-Men formed by Wolverine (who, in the last ten years had become her mate and second in command on the field), Pyro, Iceman, Shadowcat, Colossus, Blink, Polaris and herself.

There were two X-Men teams active living in the Institute. The senior team had Phoenix as team leader, her husband: Cyclops as 2iC, while the rest of the team consisted of Storm, Nightcrawler, Illusionist, Angel, Psylocke, Mystique and Beast. Then there were those who were officially retired, but would go back in the event of an emergency, which was mostly those from the first generation who still lived in the mansion (the Professor, Magneto, Nightingale, and by extension Maverick). Rose and the Maximoff twins were their own small team and they tended to travel all around, helping whoever was in need. Sean was in Scotland, had been there since shortly after marrying Moira MacTaggert (and hadn't that been a shock for all who'd known the woman back when she was still with the CIA; before leaving the organization to become a doctor…), they had two children and did their best to help what gifted they could, giving sort-of extracurricular courses to help them control their powers. Alex and Darwin had long since moved to California, where they'd created the second Xavier Institute, they also had their own X-Men team there, though not actually lead by them anymore, as they were both a bit too old for that.

It was something that could be confusing to some. It had been discovered by Beast and Charles that mutants with a certain level of powers, once they hit their prime, they effectively stopped aging. It was what allowed Charles and Erik to be in their eighties and still look like they were in their fifties at most. It was how Risa had managed to have Rose at forty-eight without any of the complications human women would have had (she also looked like she must be in her thirties, despite being over sixty). Even Anya, despite being pretty much a baseline human herself, she carried the mutant gene (her and Johann being both carriers was what had allowed Nina to be mutant herself; Django was born a carrier himself, while his own daughter Lorna was the next mutant to be born into their family-line), which made it so that she, despite being seventy-one (and actually looking it), she 'looked good for her age', and was actually more active than some people as much as a decade younger than her tended to be (the last could have been all Anya though, she was stubborn like that).

"If the invasion gets as bad as we think, then yes, we will all be going." Raven nodded seriously. "We'll even have to see who else we might call in, how long do we have?"

"Three months at most." Thor informed them grimly. "What Loki and my Jane did following the Convergence, to protect this Realm, is probably the only reason why this didn't happen years ago. It prevented any portals from forming…"

"In simple terms, the Mad Titan needed to bring his army the long way round, and that's taken him years." Loki summarized.

"Aye." Thor nodded solemnly.

"That also means it won't be easy to turn him away." Risa stated. "It won't be just a matter of closing a portal and denying them entry. And if he's actually made the trip… he won't be giving up easily."

"Not at all." Loki agreed. "Does he still seek to conquer Death?"

"He wishes to be immortal?" Hank McCoy inquired, confused.

"No, I suppose I might have chosen my words poorly." Loki shrugged. "Thanos is known as the Mad Titan for a reason. He fancies himself in love with Death."

"And his version of chocolates and flowers are all the living he can kill." Rose offered.

"Indeed." Loki confirmed.

"That's…" Charles couldn't find a word strong enough to describe that.

"He was long believed to be a myth." Risa said quietly. "Not many believed that a being that deranged could actually exist."

"And now he's coming our way…" Erik exhaled, horrified by the thought.

"There's one thing none of you have considered." Another voice offered.

All eyes turned to her. She was commonly known in the Community as Wallflower. A graduate of the Institute with a simple enough gift for going unnoticed which, while remarkable when one considered she was a rather curvaceous woman, didn't do much… at least that was until Loki took a second look at her and informed her that she wasn't going unnoticed, or becoming intangible. She was slipping into a separate dimension. She could use the Mirror Dimension to hide herself, to move around, to get one over her opponents; she could also step briefly into the Shadow Plane (the next layer), and use it to Shadow-walk within the limits of Midgard (her human need for oxygen meant she couldn't actually leave the limits of her Realm and travel to others). That was a lot more than anyone could have ever imagined. She still chose to keep her original code-name, deciding it was best for any possible enemies to underestimate her.

What was more important though, was that outside of the Community she was known as Darcy Lewis: Jane Foster's former assistant and current bodyguard (she was trained by some of the very best SHIELD Agents) and lover of Phil Coulson, the current Director of SHIELD.

Following the stand-off back in 2002, Thor and his parents had taken to visiting Midgard every so often, mostly through the Hidden Roads to avoid calling the wrong kind of attention. Sif too had visited as often as she could get away with, until she managed to earn Loki's and Risa's forgiveness. And then Ylva and Fenrir had joined their group (no one knew how exactly Thor and Sif had gotten the Allfather to release Loki's adopted child, but they somehow managed); the two had become frequent visitors; they were also Jane's escorts whenever she happened to be in the Realm Eternal.

In 2015 the Convergence took place. An amazing event that shouldn't have been too problematic. Until Darcy phoned them to let them know that her boss: Dr. Jane Foster, had been investigating the effects of the Convergence in London, she'd gone missing for five hours and upon her return someone had arrived in a rainbow and taken her away before Darcy could so much as demand an explanation (Darcy hadn't known about Thor, or the whole truth about Loki at the time).

Things happened very fast upon Jane's and Thor's return. Loki, Risa, Rose and Helena had been there to provide backup during the actual battle (making sure they wouldn't be noticed). At Darcy's own insistence they'd taken off before SHIELD could make its appearance. Though Thor had stayed to explain what had happened; also because as it turned out, Jane was his match. They were officially engaged before the month was over and married the following year.

When SHIELD had offered to fund Jane's research (both because she was the only one who understood how their world connected with others, and to be on good terms with the new crown princess of Asgard) she'd insisted on taking Darcy with her. It was how Darcy met Phil and eventually fell in love with him. It had also been his idea to train her and make her into part of Jane's protection detail (no one would expect the seemingly ditzy assistant to be a bodyguard, and no one but Jane, Phil and Thor himself knew about Darcy's mutation).

Phil knew about Darcy's status as a gifted, and what her gift was about, he also knew she was part of a secret community that wasn't the inhumans (the community SHIELD was aware of as they'd 'tangled' with them due to Phil's own protege: Skye, who turned out to be the only daughter of the deceased leader of the Inhumans), but not who they were or where they could be found. He understood why Darcy wouldn't share that and accepted it. Trusted her enough to know that if her community were bad, he'd know.

"SHIELD will be there." Darcy finished her statement.

"What can they hope to do?" Raven practically sneered. "Secret agents they might be, but this is completely beyond them."

"Not quite." Darcy almost smirked before throwing the bomb: "Let me tell you about something called the Avengers Initiative…"

Darcy shared everything she knew about it, and that was a hell of a lot, she was after all the Queen of Hackers, TaserQueen. She told them about Captain America, found in the ice back in 2011; Iron Man, though both Tony Stark and his alter ego were public enough figures; War-Machine was also well-known; the Hulk, and his other side, Dr. Bruce Banner; Falcon was a former para-rescue who'd helped veterans with therapy before being recruited; Hawkeye and Black Widow, former Agents of SHIELD who'd joined the team; and finally Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, the only two who still had secret identities, were friends and arguably the youngest in the team.

And then came the Secret Warriors. Lead by Phil's protege: Daisy Skye Johnson, code-named Quake, the heiress to the Inhuman throne (as well as a hacker known as BlueCloud, the second best hacker in the world) and her own partner, a human and former HYDRA operative (who'd switched sides out of love for Skye): Grant Ward. The rest of their team consisted of enhanced Deadlock, humans Melinda May and Alphonso Mackenzie, and inhumans answering to the names of Shock, Replica, Yoyo and Metal. Phil and Darcy themselves would likely join them in the upcoming fight.

**xXx**

It was easy enough to get word out to their allies. Helena might not live with them, but that was mostly because she lived with her fiancé: Dr. Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, and thus leader of the Mystic Order. They also could get in touch with the leader of other magical enclaves. Charles and Erik together had enough contacts in the mutant community to put all on that side on alert, while Raven, Risa, Anya and Rose took care of those from other groups they'd met before (like the Flowers in Mexico, the various clans of skinwalkers, priestesses of several orders in different parts of the world, and many others); though the only ones that really were in the 'hero business' were the Justice League.

When their countdown reached one month, there were rumors running rampant about the things some people were seeing on their telescopes, even amateurs. It was then that it became obvious that the public didn't know about the coming invasion… at all.

"Are they idiotic, or just uncaring?" Anya demanded.

She was livid, even her own family had rarely seen her like that. Risa was quite sure that the last time was when one mutant looked down on her son for being human, Anya had gone straight to him and taken him down with a well-placed punch. Then she stood up to him, refusing to cower even when he threatened her with his claws (he was a feral). When he got too close she pulled out her favorite pistol and shot him the arm, little more than a flesh-wound, but an effective warning nonetheless. It had certainly earned her the respect, not just of Sabertooth, but of many others who hadn't been sure whether humans like her, like Johann, Django, and others, should be in the Institute; be considered part of their family.

"What are they going to do, keep ignoring it until the aliens descend on them, on us all, like a plague of locusts?" She demanded.

"We cannot allow that." Django agreed. "The people deserve to know what's going on. They deserve to prepare… as much as anyone possibly can."

"We've done our best spreading the world with our allies, even some who are little more than acquaintances." Raven pointed out. "The thing is, most of them are as separate from baseline humans as we are. So even if we're ready to fight, that will not help with the civilians, the baseline humans that are bound to end up in the middle of things simply because they live in this world, the same as we do."

"What can we do?" Lorna asked quietly.

She was the youngest person present, but as she was off-age and had officially joined the junior X-Men team, she was part of what was coming.

"Let me handle it." Darcy was only present through video-call, as the situation meant she could not slip away from SHIELD as easily as before, but she still kept in touch. "I'll make sure the word gets out."

Darcy did just that. With some judicious hacking, between her and Skye they managed to get the ball rolling. It began deep in the dark web, but in less than a week it was all over legit news. 'Something' was approaching their planet, at speed. By the end of the week the governments of the world were forced to capitulate and reveal the truth: an alien army was on its way to Earth, intending not conquest, but absolute destruction. The good news? (sort-of) They had allies willing to help humanity fight. They would be ready.

**xXx**

The day of the battle came. Humanity (baseline and gifted both) was as ready as they would ever be, and Thor had managed to convince their allies from other realms to send warriors their way. The gifted waited until the last moment to reveal themselves, until the aliens were upon them and then it became a battle for survival and things like genetic differences became irrelevant.

Plans had been made. The senior and junior teams of X-Men were sent to those areas that were lacking in gifted capable of properly dealing against the army coming their way. The others, the 'Ironhearts' waited until the battle was underway, until Loki could sense exactly where Thanos had landed, then they went straight there. It was probably no coincidence that that place ended up being Upstate New York, and was the same place where the newly formed Avengers headed once the attack began.

"He's tracking the Tesseract." Loki realized as they all arrived and he senses the energy nearby. "It's an Infinity Stone, of course Thanos will want it."

"We need to make sure he won't get it." Erik stated solemnly. "Willow…"

Anya was back in the Institute, serving as their Watchtower (Jubilee did the same for the junior team and Irene for the senior one) she was on comms and kept an eye on things through all the 'eyes' she could get on the place of the battle. Her middle name served well-enough as a code-name for the duration of the battle (they couldn't exactly call her Watchtower when there were three of those at the time). They had decided it was the best way to allow her to help, without putting her in undue risk.

The battle against Thanos, his Black Order and their army of Chitauri was the worst thing many of them had ever been involved with. The X-Men had experience in fighting, but that was mostly against mutants who decided to use their gifts for evil, or those who might choose to imprison and at times experiment on gifted; at times it was just a matter of new, volatile mutants who only needed guidance. None of them had ever fought a war. The closest they'd come was with the war that had never happened, the one they'd managed to prevent before dawn on October '62.

Still, they had a plan. Charles and Erik stood together, in the years since first discovering what they were capable of when together they'd learned how to control it enough that they no longer needed to be touching physically. As long as they were close enough to connect mentally Onslaught was always there.

They had a plan. As Charles's and Erik's complete focus was on each other and on Onslaught, ChaosRose and the twins (under the code-names of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch) took positions in a loose circle around them, guarding them. The three worked well together, Rose and Peter were a match, they'd known it since she was young, had waited only long enough for her to become off-age before beginning a relationship (with their families' full knowledge and blessing) while Wendy being Peter's twin, it allowed them a bond too. It was as if they always knew what each was going to do.

Loki and Risa too worked perfectly together. While she'd never chosen to be a Warrior (her only actual X-Men mission having been the one back in '62), she understood that sometimes it was about necessity, rather than desire. So the two of them had trained together until they were as in sync as they'd been a lifetime prior. They both fought with knives (she could fight with a bow and arrows as well, but had chosen not to, as they would have been rather impractical in their current fight), and where Loki had his magic, Risa had trained her empathy to be able to use it as a weapon if need be. It was something she'd have never imagined doing when she was young, had been terrified by it the first time it happened (with the bandits), but she'd grown since then, and she knew that she couldn't ignore a part of her gift because it frightened her, when it could one day be of use to her. And the day had come…

The battle was fast, hard, intense. The only thing they'd going for them was that, in the very first few minutes Loki had taken off briefly, tracked down the Tesseract, and secreted it away into his pocket dimension. Whatever else might happen, there was no way they were letting the Mad Titan get his hands on the Space Stone.

The battle was long, but they were managing to hold their own which, they all could tell, was both shocking and angering the invaders. They'd all expected Earth to be an easy target. It was supposed to be a primitive planet, with short-lived, weak individuals. It was what many thought, not just on Thanos's side, but in other Realms as well. They thought that because humans were mortal, and because they weren't unified, they were simple-minded, weak, useless… humanity was proving them wrong in every account.

Former Director Fury (who'd ended up involved in the fight taking place in Europe) certainly didn't like to see so many gifted and enhanced coming out of the wood-work; particularly he didn't like the fact that they had been around for years and SHIELD hadn't known, he hadn't known. In the spy business lack of knowledge could kill you! Then again, he had never been very open minded with those who were 'other' in any possible sense. Coulson was much more willing to work with such individuals, as demonstrated by the fact that the girl he treated as his own daughter had turned out to be one of them, the future leader of one of their groups, and Phil had never so much as wavered in his affection for her. Also, Hill had just informed him that Phil's own lover: Darcy Lewis, had just revealed herself as gifted too so… Nick wasn't sure if he should be proud of his chosen replacement for breaching the divide, or angry that he'd hidden it from Nick himself! Then again, Phil was the one calling the shots nowadays, and that was something Nick just needed to get used to…

They had been fighting for hours, and there were some that only kept going because they knew the terrible consequences that would fall upon them all should the battle be lost. And then it happened, from one moment to the next, a single thing that changed everything.

There was a cry, Nightingale picked up on it through the comms, though just a fraction of a second later she sensed the mix of grief and horror that was caused by it.

"The Prince has fallen!"

It was the cry that was taken up by all the Asgardians around. Crown Prince Thor had fallen. Nightingale reacted instinctively, giving two steps in the direction she felt the grief coming from, before remembering herself. Then she turned to her beloved who was practically vibrating with the mix of worry and fury even as he began conjuring ice blades at a faster rate, taking down as many chitauri as he could lay eyes on.

*Go!* He told her mentally.

*My love…* Nightingale whispered mentally, not knowing what else to say.

*You can help him more than I can at this time.* He pointed out grimly. *You go, I will stay with the children.*

Nothing else needed to be said. Nightingale focused, pulled on her match's power through their bond and them 'jumped'.

"It's me Jane!" Risa called out the moment she landed, even as she dropped to her knees beside Thor, ignoring everyone else.

Jane was on the other side of Thor, dressed in a turquoise gown and platinum armor, on her arm a platinum shield with a white swan and what would become Jane's royal name once she took the throne by Thor's side: Svanhvit.

Many eyes turned towards Risa instantly, and she knew they must have been shocked. Not just for her sudden appearance but also the fact that she was dressed in her black leather-looking X-Men attire, thick-soled boots on her feet, her long dark brown hair in a loose ponytail falling down to her mid-back.

"Nightingale, you can heal him!" Jane exclaimed, hope taking over her grief.

"That's what I'm here for Janey." Risa sent her some comfort before turning her whole attention to the blonde Asgardian on the ground.

It took a while. Healing an Aesir wasn't the same as healing humans. It required a lot more energy than any mortal did. Risa was quite sure that if Ylva hadn't delivered enough herbs for Loki and her to brew a few elixirs she would never have managed it. But she did, and was only a bit out of breath (and very exhausted) once she was finished.

"Sister…" Thor breathed out the moment his eyes opened, the only saving grace being that he did so in Old Norse, so it was unlikely that anyone not Aesir (and not Jane) would understand.

"I'm here Thor." Risa replied in the same language, before switching to English. "Just take a moment to breathe and then you can go bash a few more skulls."

"You should take a breath too my lady, you look exhausted." Ylva, who'd approached to help Jane guard over them, said quietly.

Risa was considering her chances of doing exactly that, when her body abruptly spasmed. Arching backwards before she curled into herself defensively, a half-strangled cry of pain leaving her lips before she could control herself.

"Nightingale!" Several voices cried out at the same time.

Risa paid them no heed, her whole attention was on her beloved. Her badly wounded match…

"Loki!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, before letting herself fall into the shadows surrounding her.

Nightingale hadn't shadow-walked on her own for a lifetime, yet in that moment it was as easy as breathing. She stood from her kneeling posture at the same time as she left the Shadow-Plane, coming out a good distance away from where she'd been seeing to Thor, to stand a few feet from her beloved; who was half kneeling, half lying on the broken concrete that used to be a sidewalk, a hand pressed to what was pretty much of a gouge on his flank.

A part of Risa took a moment to process the fact that her husband was in his Jotunn form, skin blue, hard and cold, and that was probably the only reason why his enemy's spear (one of Thanos's lieutenant) hadn't pierced him through right through the middle; instead deviating to a side and carving a bit into him. A horrific wound, but less dangerous than it would have been otherwise. Also, a touch from him, with the full might of a Royal Jotunn behind it, had been enough to turn Loki's enemy into ice, which even then was stood just a few inches from Risa, like a monstrous sculpture.

If that were all, Risa would have been able to relax, she might have even found it in herself to joke about the scare her match had just given her. But it was right then that his half-strangled shout interrupted her thoughts. She let out a quiet cry of her own as she saw that it was Thanos, standing right there holding her match by the neck, too high for even his toes to touch the ground. He was choking…

"Let him go!" Risa cried out, throwing her blades at the Titan one after the other. "Let my match go you monster!"

"I thought you would be interesting." Thanos commented offhandedly, looking at Loki. "But you're just like everyone else… a mere insect."

With a flick of his wrist Thanos threw Loki away, as if he were nothing. Risa let out a cry of terror, which was cut off when she saw Quicksilver come out of seemingly nowhere, catching her husband just in the nick of time. The development allowed her to breathe easier if just for a moment. And then Thanos's attention turned towards her.

It was… the most terrifying moment in Risa's entire existence. And she'd lived through things that would have traumatized everyone, several times over. She'd gone against bandits when being just a child, had been part of a team that was responsible for stopping WWIII… and yet nothing could compare with the absolute terror that seized her the moment the Mad Titan turned his whole attention towards her.

"And you, little one, what kind of insect are you?" He asked in a most patronizing tone.

Risa would never be able to explain the kind of anger, of outright fury that filled her in that moment. That… that creature standing before her, who looked upon humans like they were vermin, who threw her match aside like he was so much trash. She couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand the thought of him winning… It went beyond the tragedy it would be, all the lives that would be lost. In that moment it was just looking at Thanos and believing, above everything, that he didn't deserve to win. Power, might, experience, those were all irrelevant. Thanos was a monster and he couldn't be allowed to win.

Risa didn't even know what she was doing, not really. All she knew in that moment was what needed to happen: Thanos needed to be defeated. And it was on her to find a way to do exactly that… somehow.

"Phei!" It was Anya Willow screaming, practically shrieking in terror, through her comm.

And, almost as if behind her, everyone else could be heard as well.

The call didn't so much distract Risa as focus her, suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do. She remembered Anya, all of five-years-old, in a yellow hand-sewn dress, remembered a dirt road by the edge of some woods, bandits, and a cage that smelled awful, and she remembered singing a lullaby to calm her little sister and how it changed everything…

There weren't actually any songs, not really; there was no time, and for the life of her she could not think of a tune that would give her what she needed. But with or without a melody, she was still an Empath, she was still the goddess of the X-Men, of the mutant community, she was still one of the Ironheart.

So, with that in mind, Risa threw herself straight at Thanos. She ducked low, avoiding the hand intending to swat her like a fly (like an insect), spun around to avoid the punch that came from the Titan's other hand. And then she pulled a bit (just a tiny little bit) on her love's magic to teleport straight into Thanos's space. She might not have been too tall, while he was a behemoth, but he'd half-crouched when seeking to hit her, and she worked that to her advantage, as it put him at the perfect height for her to press both of her hands, palms open wide, against his face, fingertips barely grazing his temples. She took a deep breath, and then just let go, unleashing the full force of her mutation on the Titan.

When Thanos dropped to his knees before the petite, dark-haired, leather-clad woman everything around them, not just in NY, but in the whole world, seemed to freeze. When his eyes closed and he began collapsing… it was absolute pandemonium.

The Chitauri fled, like wild animals when faced with fire. Thanos's last standing lieutenant went to his side, picking the warlord up. He briefly considered killing the one who'd dared bring him low but in the end decided the risk was too big, that someone else might try and finish what she began against his lord, so he fled too. Thanos would not reward his choice, but he'd be alive, and they could return to attack the planet another day…

Risa didn't really see any of that. She wasn't even quite conscious by then. The only reason she never hit the ground was because Quicksilver had chosen to take the risk and sped towards her, scooping her up and returning to where his sister and wife were standing guard over a still recovering Loki.

"What just happened?" Erik demanded.

He and Charles had been taking a break (and not their first one). Even if their powers were pretty much in their minds, they both felt as if they'd just run half a dozen marathons, consecutively.

"Risa knocked the purple grape out!" Peter announced with a chuckle that was half eager delight, half nervousness and near-hysteria.

"They're leaving!" Anya announced through the comms. "And it's not just in NY. All around the planet the chitauri are fleeing!"

"It's over." Charles breathed out, unable to help himself as he finally dropped to the ground. "It's finally over. We won."

Yes it was, and yes they had. Unbelievable as it might seem. They'd won…

**xXx**

It took all of three days for Risa and Loki to recover enough to join all those already helping with salvage, rescue and rebuilding in New York. Anya was right there, coordinating with the other groups, mainly SI and OsCorp that were footing the bills for much of what was being done. Anya, being so visibly human, dealing the exact same way with baseline humans, gifted and enhanced… she set an example even without trying. And when Nina came around with a bunch of rescue dogs (one of the rescue crews had allowed her to take over when realizing she could actually understand the animals, and thus was much more effective when telling others where to search for survivors) and called Anya mom… it was a perfect moment.

It was near the end of the day, when they were approached by none other than Nick Fury.

"Just who are you?" He demanded.

Risa cocked her head to a side, wondering at the reasons behind such a demand.

Truth was Fury had been making such demands since he was still in Europe, to no avail. While many had come to trust SHIELD since Coulson had become Director, they did not trust Fury himself (he refused to consider the fact that he might have been the reason why they did not trust SHIELD before…). The Inhumans were protected by SHIELD itself, due to their Queen's status in the organization, the spell-weavers tended to ignore him and leave when he became too insistent, and even he wasn't crazy enough to try and make demands of people who could turn into bloodthirsty beasts (mostly wolves).

"We're the Ironhearts." Anya announced, taking command easily enough. "We're the core leadership of the Mutant Community."

"Mutants don't exist!" Fury retorted. "They're a fantasy created by some Dr. Xavier…"

Several people actually chuckled, and the former Director had no idea why until one of the older men in the group stepped forward.

"That'd be me." He announced. "Doctor Charles Francis Xavier. I'm a mutant, a telepath to be precise… and before you say what's running through your head right now, let me tell you that you not knowing we existed, that we could even exist, does not somehow invalidate our own existence, nothing can do that."

"Your government knew once we existed." Erik added for good measure. "We worked with them for a while, Charles and myself, and a few others, back in the 60s. Things didn't go so well and we were forced to part ways."

"Division X." Coulson was the first to put the pieces together, and he was in shock. "Charlie Darkholme and Erik Lehnsherr…"

"You abandoned the humans when things got tough." Hill scoffed.

"No, we didn't." Charles shook his head. "After the attack on HQ… we just decided it was better if we handled things ourselves. We took down Shaw and the Hellfire Club ourselves, before they could force things in Cuba."

Several people blinked rapidly as things began clearing up for then. Things like Division X, Shaw, the Hellfire Club, might not have meant much for them, but anyone could put 'the 60s' and 'Cuba' together and reach the exact same conclusion:

"The Cuban Missile Crisis!" Spider-Man cried out in shock. "You were part of that."

"In few words, a man called Sebastian Shaw had been playing both sides of the board, in this case meaning both Russia and the United States." Risa declared evenly. "The reasons for this are irrelevant. He was absolutely deranged. A CIA Agent saw some of his people, the members of he Hellfire Club and that pushed her to seek Charles out. The initial plan was to form a special team that would assist the CIA in arresting Shaw, but after the attack on Division X's HQ, a new plan was needed. In the end we went after Shaw on our own, dealt with him and his followers just before the American and Russian fleets got close to Cuba. Were gone before anyone ever knew we were there."

"And what then?" Iron Man wanted to know.

"Not much." Risa shrugged. "We've focused on making sure our own people will be alright. That they will learn to use their powers, to have control, to be able to live among humans without hurting others or being hurt."

"I am human, baseline human to be precise." Anya announced. "My father and all my siblings are mutants, my husband was baseline, while my children, my son is baseline, my daughter a mutant. We may have our genetic differences, but in the end, we're still family. We always will be."

For a moment it looked like Fury was going to press. Really, the man was going crazy, so unused to not being in control, he clearly had no idea what to do with himself. But Risa wasn't about to allow him to ruin the best chance they'd ever had to achieve real integration, the biggest dream Charles (all of them really) had ever had, simply because one single man wasn't getting his own way. She also wasn't going to fight him, that wouldn't have been the right example. So instead she did what she did best, what had always worked for her. She took a deep breath, and she sang:

"I wanna leave my footprints on the sands of time

Know there was something that, meant something that I left behind

When I leave this world, I'll leave no regrets

Leave something to remember, so they won't forget"

"I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here"

They were there, and they weren't leaving. That was something that not just Nick Fury, but everyone else needed to know, to understand. Mutants had been around for decades, more than half a century (much longer than that in fact). They might have kept to themselves for the longest time, but it was no longer possible. They weren't going to hide, and more importantly, they would not allow others to use them, or to control them. They were mutants and proud of it, and they would stand side by side with every other gifted, enhanced and baseline human in the world.

"I wanna say I lived each day, until I die

And know that I meant something in somebody's life

The hearts I have touched will be the proof that I leave

That I made a difference, and this world will see"

"I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know"

"I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here"

They didn't exactly plan it, but as Risa sang right there, with Loki on her right and Anya on her left, Charles and Erik were standing just to the right of them all, while Raven joined them silently at their left side. It was all of them, the Ironhearts standing together, like they always had, since first meeting on the grounds of the Xavier mansion back in the Fall of 1962, when the daughters of one man were revealed to be the sisters of another, hearts were healed and the foundations for one family came into being. A family that would grow, exponentially, one that was and would continue being a big part in changing the world. Not just for mutants, but for all living beings.

"I just want them to know

That I gave my all, did my best

Brought someone some happiness

Left this world a little better just because

I was here"

"I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I wanna leave my mark so everyone will know"

"I was here

I lived (I lived), I loved

I was here

I did (I did), I've done

I was here

I lived (I lived), I loved (I loved)

I was here (oh)

I did, I've done

I was here"

Unknown to most people present, to all but ChaosRose and those most tightly connected with her, while the Nightingale sang, a new vision was taking form inside the gifted Seer's mind. A vision of the things that would come, all the ways the world would change following what was happening in that very moment… It wasn't a utopia, not by any extent, but that was okay, utopias are just lies, pretty, impossible lies.

What Rose was seeing was, in many ways, the things they'd all hoped for, dreamed of, since Charles had first put the idea of integration into their minds. For so long it had seemed like nothing more than a pretty dream, nigh on impossible. Even as they did their best to make sure that the human families would get to know their mutant members, to understand them, accept them. Sometimes it was possible, others there was no way. But they never gave up, they kept doing their best. And were rewarded with those families where love truly was stronger than any possible difference. Something that seemed to happen more often as years passed, times changed, people became more open minded.

Even then, it had always been one thing for family, loved ones to know the truth and accept it. Most of the mutants had never imagined a day when the world as a whole might know they existed, and not just accept them, but embrace them. The X-Men had helped save the world, and in return that somehow seemed to have proven, beyond a shadow a doubt, that they'd more than earned the right to be a part of it.

The vision was coming to an end when Rose noticed something. The spear that one of Thanos's lieutenant had used to try and kill her father… it had shattered, all but the gem at the top of it. A gem that had been picked up by one of them almost absentmindedly, at the end of the battle. Rose didn't see much, but enough to know exactly what she'd need to do, the way Tony Stark, Thor and Helena would be needed, working together to bring into the world the one person Wendy had been waiting for her whole life.

*Just wait a little longer Ed…* Rose mind-whispered to the jewel in her pocket. *You'll get your chance soon. Both you and Wendy will… I will make sure of it.*

* * *

So... what do you think? I love ScarletWitch/Vision but couldn't find a way to fit it in other than the implication for the future. Also, I handled Risa's gifts a bit different this time, even if some things ended being the same. I hope that was alright. I took special delight with Charles, making him different, because there were others who needed him. It's part of the idea that each character may change due to the people they connect with and events they experience. And in this case, that applied to Jason Stryker too.

For the next piece... I've always wanted to do something with Black Panther. "Midnight Songbird" was written before the movie came out and thus had nothing to do with it. But I loved the movie and wanted to do something with it. This was my chance. So see ya in three weeks!

P.S. I would really, really love it if I got some reviews/comments, please? (Anyone wanna guess where Nightingale's next incarnation will pop up exactly, I've already given you a huge clue...).


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